Dastirum
by Kryschenn
Summary: After the events of The Dragon's Graveyard, the kids ask Dungeon Master what he meant to tell them about the Duke of Darkness. They must travel to the town of Dastirum and find a way to break the curse that has besieged the land.
1. The Rest of the Riddle

Disclaimer: Dungeons and Dragons the Cartoon, and all its ensuing characters, is the property of TSR/Marvel, or maybe its successor, Saban Entertainment, or possibly Wizards of the Coast, or maybe even Hasbro, or at one time BCI Eclipse, or it could now be Mill Creek Entertainment, or, heard once in a rumor, Disney. In other words, nobody's really sure who owns it, but it's definitely not the author of this story. The author stands accused of all other characters in this story, and pleads insanity. Copyrighted characters are being used without permission, but with love and the best of intentions. Actual owners of the cartoon, whoever you may be, fear not: I am not making any money from this, so no sue I. And yes, I borrowed a smidge of Tolkien and stuck it in here too. But guess what? I don't own that, either.

A big, fat, humongous **Thank You** goes out to my buddy Cole del Tigre, a.k.a. Robert, for being my sounding board, beta reader, offerer of great ideas to steal, and general encourager for this story. Another thank you goes to my friend John S. for the unflagging motivation.

**Dastirum**

**by Kryschenn**

**o o o**

Chapter 1: The Rest of the Riddle

**o o o**

"_I am sorry that your quest for a way home met with failure. Perhaps you will have better luck in the future. But now, there is great danger ahead. The Duke of Darkness has taken over the land of –"_

"_Wait, Dungeon Master. We only want to hear two things. How do we find Tiamat, and how do we use her to beat Venger once and for all?"_

"_Listen to me, Ranger. Do not let your anger control you. The course you are taking can only lead ... to ... ruin ...? So then. It has come to this."_

**o o o**

All things considered, their latest adventure could have turned out a lot worse.

With a thoughtful harrumph, Presto tried not to dwell on it, instead drawing the point of his new dagger across the bark of the fallen log next to where he sat. As yet, he hadn't discovered what special power this knife had. Though he'd been testing it in different ways for the past four days, he'd had little success. Yet despite the discouraging lack of results, he hadn't given up because he was sure it would do something eventually. His current operating theory was that he just didn't know what to ask it to do. Weapons of Power were pretty specific that way. Yes, each of the Weapons had great powers, but for the most part, they were very specialized powers, and the wielder had to know what it was capable of doing before he could use it properly.

Which explained his Hat, when you came right down to it. Lately, it had been working even worse than usual, if that was possible.

He considered the better example of Eric's Shield, and glanced up at his friend. It caused him a slight grin to note that Eric was currently batting out a small fire at the hem of his cape, which had accidentally trailed into their camp fire. The Shield could deflect a blow from a war hammer and the Cavalier would barely even feel it, or create a domed force field that could protect an entire group, or it could even act with enough power to let its wielder prop up tons of falling rock with a minimum of effort. But it could not, for instance, let Eric fly. The Shield was a shield, and its powers were related to shielding, no matter how hard Eric asked it to do something else.

Presto was sure it was the same case with this dagger. It probably had some very distinct, knife-like power, and Presto figured he just wasn't yet asking it to do whatever it was that it was supposed to do. Presto sighed quietly. All this guessing was getting old fast. He should have given the dagger a thorough testing in the Dragon's Graveyard before they'd gotten out of that crazy place.

There. The Dragon's Graveyard. He was thinking about it again.

It had been unexpected to the point of frightening to see their normally level-headed leader lose it so completely, and for the first couple of days after the fight in the Dragon's Graveyard, the rest of the group had treaded pretty gingerly around the Ranger. The way he'd snapped and gone off on a single-minded determination to kill Venger, willing to commit premeditated murder despite clearly knowing what he was doing was wrong, had scared them all, plain and simple. And judging by the look of pure shock on their guide's face which melted into such crushing disappointment when Hank had so succinctly told him to shove it, Presto suspected that even Dungeon Master had been keeping his distance for much the same reason.

Honestly, Presto had felt all that subsequent pussyfooting around was pointless. Yes, it had been touch-and-go from the beginning, but in the end they'd all witnessed their leader manage to bring himself back to his senses at the last possible moment, and not kill the pinned and defenseless Venger. Everything was back to as close to normal as it could be in this world. They all knew that Hank had made the right decision, that his conscience was clear.

And not one of them was giving a second thought to what Presto was going through.

_Hank snapped out of it when it really counted, _Presto mused, _and Bobby? Everyone can forgive him for going on his own rampage. He's just a kid. I don't think he's really developed a clear picture of what's right and what's wrong just yet, and being that upset about Uni being hurt, plus losing another chance to get home, well, I think we all understand. And he probably figured that if Hank was going off about killing Venger, it was fine for him to say it too. Sheila's talked to him. Talked to both of them. They're all cool now. But what about me? Has anyone thought about what I did?_

Idly, his mind clearly not on what he was doing, he balanced the mystery knife across his finger and watched it for a moment. Then he glanced in the direction of the setting suns. No, its power was definitely not to act as a compass.

_I'm the one that pinned Venger, _Presto reminded himself. _I had the power to immobilize him, to leave him completely helpless. And I did. Hank didn't make any secret of what he was intending. I knew he meant to kill Venger. I wanted him to do it. I even set him up to shoot Venger like a fish in a bucket, and so what if it wasn't a fair fight any more? It didn't bother me a bit._

With a sigh, Presto tucked the dagger into its new place in the sash around his waist. As fascinating as it was, the knife was just his temporary distraction, really. Experimenting with it was supposed to keep his mind from pondering what he considered to be the darker side of his personality that had so recently been revealed to him. And it was obvious how well *that* was working. So he'd tinker around with the knife more later. Right now, he figured that if he was going to dwell on his own shortcomings, he might as well give it his all. Plopping his chin into his hands, he stared off morosely across the fire. One miserable blue funk with a side of self-loathing, coming right up.

_I figured we were all going to see Venger's head blown into crispy-fried bits, _the Magician freely admitted to himself. _I didn't know that Hank was going to change his mind at the last second. He did the right thing in the end. I had the chance to do the right thing, too. Why didn't my conscience bug me about it? I could have released that binding spell at any time, even after Hank fired that arrow, and given Venger a fair chance to dodge it. So what does it say about me that I didn't?_

"Hey, Presto!" Eric's voice interrupted just as Presto's mental self-flagellation was building up a good head of steam. The Cavalier sat down on the log next to him, smelling just slightly of singed wool. "What's up?"

"What's up?" Presto repeated vaguely, still staring into nothing. By rote, he recited dully, "'Up' is a two-letter preposition indicating direction opposite the flow of gravity."

There was a beat of silence, and Eric just stared. "Ooooookayyy ..." he drawled slowly, not sure what else he could say to that one.

Blinking, Presto shook himself out of the place he was dwelling inside his head when he realized what had just come out of his mouth. "What? Oh, sorry." He waved his hand absently, which caused Eric a few vague fears about an accidentally-cast spell. "Kind of an automatic response there. It's a nerd thing."

"Yeah, right," Eric answered, sounding a little more cocky this time. "You practiced that one in front of a mirror."

"Every day before school," Presto agreed with a ghost of a smile, which felt good. Maybe this was what he needed right now. He and Eric could banter about nearly anything, and in the end, Eric's bombastic manner and skewed world-view usually cheered the Magician right up.

"Thought so," Eric nodded. "Okay then, instead of tapping your inner dictionary again, allow me to repeat myself differently. Why are you sitting there brooding like ... like ..." He shrugged. "Like someone who broods a lot?"

Great.

Plunking his chin back into his palm, Presto sighed deeply. So much for distracting himself from the topic. "Chickens have broods," he attempted anyway, halfheartedly.

"Huh," Eric mused. "So what you're telling me is that avoiding brooding means nobody will call us chicken?"

Presto just sighed again. It did not escape Eric's notice that he had passed the opportunity to pounce on the intentionally wide-open remark. That wasn't a good sign. Usually Presto glomped on just about any remark he made, whether it was wide-open, intentional, or just some poor, innocent bystander remark. It was, for the Cavalier, the final straw. "Okay. So," he finally asked directly, running his fingers through his hair in mild frustration. "What's wrong? You keep having these spells of ... okay, not a good word choice there. You've been sitting around not acting like yourself when you think nobody's looking. You've been doing it since we got back from the Dragon's Graveyard. You think I haven't noticed?"

Well, there was no denying it, it looked like his little secret was more out in the open than Presto had realized. Still, it wasn't exactly something he wanted to talk about, not even with Eric, who was the best friend he had in this crazy world. His seeming lack of a conscience made Presto a monster in his own mind. How was anyone, even his best friend, supposed to be okay with something like that? "I ... kinda miss Varla?" he ventured hopefully.

"Sheesh, Presto, you missed her before we went to the Dragon's Graveyard," Eric reasoned with a dramatic eye-roll, obviously not dissuaded. "You didn't act like this until after we got back."

"Well, uh ... okay," Presto sighed, casting around mentally for anything to fill in the blank. "It's just ... it's this dagger I took," he finally decided.

"No, it's not," Eric countered immediately, proving he was a little more perceptive than most people credited him for. "Not unless its power is to cause clinical depression in whoever holds it."

That gave Presto pause. He looked away, guiltily, and couldn't quite bring himself to say anything further.

Sliding off his seat, Eric sat on the ground with his back to the log, propping his elbows against it casually, legs outstretched. After a moment of staring off in the same direction that Presto was, he realized the Magician just wasn't going to take the lead in this conversation. So, taking a stab in the dark, he asked quietly and very seriously, "Is it about what ol' DM said? That one's been bugging me a lot."

This got a confused blink and a frown out of Presto, who turned to look at Eric curiously. "Huh? Okay, you lost me. He says a lot of stuff, all the time. What exactly did he say that bugs you ... well, more than normal anyway, and when?"

"When we were getting out of there," Eric said, waving his hand generally upwards in a gesture that was supposed to encompass the Dragon's Graveyard, wherever it was. "We were pretty much through the portal thingamajig. But I swear ..." Eric paused, pursing his lips thoughtfully. This had been troubling him for a few days now, especially since it was turning out that no one had heard it but him. "You sure you didn't hear Dungeon Master say anything to Venger?"

Shaking his head slowly, Presto thought a moment before he answered, "Something he said to Venger? Not to us? Um." He ran everything he could remember of those last few, crazy minutes in the Dragon's Graveyard through his head one more time, but nothing leapt out as unusual. "No, I don't think so. I mean, I know they were still there even though we were leaving, but I don't think I heard either of them say anything. Did you?"

Eric didn't reply right away. So Presto hadn't heard it either. It turned out that neither Sheila nor Diana hadn't either, when he'd asked them earlier. Well, maybe he was just going crazy. Or he'd been hearing things. The noise of the portal, the swooshing through the space between worlds, the vaguely seasick sounds his friends were making all must have played tricks on his ears. Dungeon Master couldn't possibly have called Venger his son ...

"Nah. It's nothing," Eric said dismissively. "Just the evil voices in my head telling me to eat more vegetables. But waaaay back to the original question, why are you all mopey all of the sudden?"

Presto was still wondering just what it was that Eric thought he'd heard. That was by far the more interesting topic, but apparently there was no hope for making it last as a diversion. "It's just ... things just seem a little different now," he admitted carefully, pushing his glasses back up his nose to give himself a moment to think. If he phrased this right, Eric would understand. Wouldn't he? After all, at one point or another, hadn't every one of them shown a staggering lack of good judgement over something? "I mean, we almost killed Venger, you know, in cold blood and all. Did you ever think that we'd be capable of actually killing someone? Especially like that? I mean, I mean, if it was turned around, Venger wouldn't really care if we could fight back or not. And we didn't care either, for a minute there. We were all ... well, okay, I guess I should say *most* of us were this close to doing exactly what he would have done to us." The Magician held up his thumb and forefinger, less than half an inch apart to indicate what he meant by "this close."

"Yeah," Eric agreed, holding his fingers up in a similar manner. "Changing your aim just this much makes the difference between blowing someone's head off and setting him free." He scowled faintly. "Of course, I'm not saying that it isn't as irritating as wet sand in my underwear."

"Um, I really didn't need that mental image," Presto interjected.

"Okay. Sorry. DRY sand in my underwear," Eric corrected himself. "But the point is ... um ... did I have a point?" He took just a second to haul his train of thought back onto its tracks. "Oh, yeah. We'd be better off without Venger breathing down our necks all the time. So would the whole Realm. *If* he stayed dead, that is. The guy regenerates bodies like a cat hacks up hairballs. But it's like Hank said, killing Venger like that would have made him every bit as bad as Venger himself. Letting ol' Horn Head go really was the right thing to do, as miserable as it may make our lives later." He gave a stretch and a yawn, showing that the topic did not concern him overmuch. "So that's what you're all upset about? Gimme a break, Presto! Hank's got a good head on his shoulders -- yes, you just heard me admit that -- and he's not going to turn into some cold-blooded killer on us."

As Presto had noted, Eric was usually a bit more observant than most people would credit him for, so it frustrated the Magician that the Cavalier hasn't picked up on his emphatic use of the word "we." Did no one at all recognize Presto's major part in the near-disaster? Even Eric seemed not to realize that Hank hadn't exactly acted alone. "Oh, well, actually, it's not him I'm worried about, really," he began, working himself towards making his admission. Then, abruptly, he stopped, and looked around their little camp. "Except for right now, actually. Where is he?"

Eric frowned again, fairly certain that Presto had intended to say something else entirely. But he couldn't begin to guess what, so he filed it away for the moment, knowing that pushing would make the Magician clam up that much more quickly. He followed Presto's eyes around the camp, making a quick head count to be sure everyone accounted for. Bobby was over there, patiently picking burrs and small twigs out of Uni's mane, and the stupid little Unicorn was sprawled happily on his lap, soaking up the attention. Sheila and Diana were by the fire, preparing what looked like one of the more abundant dinners they'd had in some time. The slow-moving river nearby had practically been jumping with fish, and Diana was skewering the ones they had caught earlier, stuffing them with some sort of unidentified but tasty culinary herb in preparation for roasting over the fire. Sheila was next to her, stirring up something with a bunch of mushrooms and some weird root vegetables that was starting to smell downright delicious. And Hank was ...

"Oh, yeah," Eric remembered. "The girls asked our fearless leader to go get some more firewood to cook dinner." He leaned back against the log with a deep sigh, reveling in the fact that he wasn't doing any of the work this evening. "Personally, I think he's taking any excuse to go play with that shiny new Sword he nicked out of the Dragon's Graveyard."

"Gotta admit," Presto agreed, "there's something kind of neat about being able to chop down a tree in one whack." Thoughtfully, he pulled the as-yet powerless dagger halfway out of his belt and took another look at it. He hadn't been the only one to take a "souvenir" from the Dragon's Graveyard. Sheila had as well, when she grabbed that Healing Net that Dungeon Master had demonstrated. Diana hadn't wanted to take any additional Weapons, though, saying rightly that anything more than she already carried would actually hinder her Acrobatic skills, and Bobby had been too preoccupied with Uni to even think about taking anything. He still hadn't figured out why Eric had passed on the opportunity, though. "Say ... Eric?" he wondered, holding the knife out for the Cavalier to see. "You think that maybe Tiamat might not be too happy with us for taking these? I mean, we kind of stole these out of her home, you know."

"Oh, pfffft! Is THAT what you've been moping about all this time?" Eric laughed. "As far as I can see, Tiamat doesn't really care about us personally. She's not going around trying to take our Weapons back or anything, and you know these babies," here he drummed his fingers on the edge of his Shield, "had to have come from the same place. Her beef is with Venger and all she sees us as is maybe a way to get rid of him for her. I'll bet she's glad we took them because it just increases our chances against him."

Both of them looked up as Hank returned to the campsite, and, just as Eric surmised, he was carrying a large armload of firewood that was so neatly and cleanly chopped that it could have been cut by a precision laser. A plain, sheathed broadsword hung unassumingly from his belt at his left side, and, also as Eric had guessed, he looked like he'd been rather enjoying himself out there. "Yeah, but ..." Presto argued after an acknowledging nod to their leader. "Look at it this way. Venger says he can use the Weapons to destroy Tiamat. And we just brought a whole bunch more of those Weapons into this world." He sheathed the dagger again with finality. "That means more Weapons that Venger can get at and use against her, if he ever actually takes them from us. If you think about it from Tiamat's point of view, we really didn't do her any favors by taking these."

Indeed, Eric did think about it for a moment. "What d'ya mean, 'we'?" he finally said, holding his hands up, fingers spread to show they were empty. "You didn't see *me* take anything. I'm not worried. When Tiamat's five angry heads show up, she can eat the five of you for lunch, and I'll be perfectly safe!" He paused to let out a good laugh.

"Yeah, then you'll be stuck here alone with Uni," Presto noted with a his first unforced smile in several days.

Eric's face immediately soured. "You make a good case for being dessert," he conceded. "But seriously. I can't believe you've been worrying yourself sick all this time over taking a few extra Weapons from Tiamat. You'd know if she was mad about it. She's the freakin' Queen of the freakin' Dragons, and if she wanted them back, she would have come after them by now."

"No, I ... I guess that's really not what's bugging me," Presto said after a beat, which earned him an unamused grunt from Eric.

"This is a pretty stupid guessing game," Eric said bluntly. "Here I'm trying to be all helpful and figure out what's wrong and even cheer you up because you're just no fun when you're moping. See how nice I am? So work with me here." He held up several fingers of one hand, and tugged at his ear with the other. "Okay, how many words? Sounds like ...?"

Presto rolled his eyes. "Um. Sounds like ... Dungeon Master!"

"Huh?" Eric screeched to a verbal halt for just a second. "Dungeon Master's got you all depressed? I thought you said you didn't hear ... oh, wait, wait, I got it. You figure His Shortness is all miffed that we told him to stuff it, and so you think he's not going to show up and feed us a bunch of 'blah blah blah' and run us around in circles any more and ..."

"No," Presto interrupted, pointing over Eric's shoulder. "I mean, Dungeon Master!"

Eric froze. Of course. Dungeon Master. What impeccable timing the little twerp had. Always, always when his mouth was shooting off of its own accord ... Pasting a beauty-pageant smile on his face, he turned his head to follow the direction of Presto's finger, which pointed to the other end of the fallen log. "Dungeon Master!" he said cheerfully. "We were just talking about you!"

"So it would seem," their diminutive guide said neutrally as the others, having heard Presto's outburst, dropped what they were doing and came to gather in a rough semicircle around the fallen log. "Nothing bad, I should hope?"

"Oh, nah," Eric waved his hand in the air nonchalantly. "Just, you know, wondering where you've been the past few days. All we do is sit around, camping, talking, fishing, playing a little three-on-three soccer, all that boring safe stuff when you don't have something more exciting for us to do."

Nodding slightly, as if he knew the Cavalier would provide the perfect opening, as usual, Dungeon Master answered, "Then perhaps what I have to say will interest you. If, that is," he added, shooting a sidelong glance towards Hank, "I may speak freely?"

Hank had the good grace to look a little chagrined. "Yeah, um ... about that," he said, looking away and rubbing the back of his neck in an unconscious gesture of embarrassment. He'd long since asked forgiveness from everyone else for the uncharacteristic explosion of temper that had almost cost them all, but four days had passed without being able to really apologize to the person he figured he'd disappointed the most. "Okay. Look, I was way out of line. I'm sorry. I know you had something important you were trying to tell us and, well, I just went off the deep end on you. Something about ... um ..."

In his fit of anger and frustration, Hank actually hadn't heard what Dungeon Master had been trying to tell them at all. He glanced at Eric, who he knew had been paying a little more attention at the time. The Cavalier immediately prompted, "The Duke of Darkness, whoever that is, taking over some land somewhere."

"Right. Duke of Darkness," Hank agreed, sounding rather contrite about it, though he managed a lame grin. "So ... if I promise no interruptions this time, is it too late to ask what that was all about?"

"Not at all, Ranger," Dungeon Master replied graciously, accepting the apology and leaving it at that. "In fact, it is that very topic I bring to you now."

"If at first ya don't succeed, try, try again," Eric immediately interrupted, instantly earning him a sharp rap on the back of his head from Diana. "Ow! Okay, okay! No interrupting, I get it. Sheesh." Smoothing his hair back into place, Eric gave Dungeon Master one very long, speculative look. Clearly there was something important on his mind and he was debating whether or not to ask it. After a second or two, he shook his head, as if deciding against it, or at least putting it off until later. Instead, he laced his fingers behind his head and leaned back against the log in a supremely relaxed pose, eyes closed. "So, Dungeon Master," he said with mock cheer, "let's hear all about El Dukerino!"

"The Duke spreads his particular brand of Darkness in the lands to the West," Dungeon Master informed them calmly. "With very little military force, he has systematically driven villages and cities into capitulation through fear alone. In this way, he has been slowly expanding his conquered territory."

"Expanding his conquered territory. Sounds like a real peach," Eric muttered, then cracked one eye open a bit, just to give himself a bit of advance warning in case Diana was going to smack him again.

"Indeed, he has the potential to become a significant threat to the Realm," Dungeon Master agreed. "His tools are fear and despair, which vanquish hope more completely than any show of arms."

"Whoa, wait a minute," Presto said, holding up his hand, unknowingly making it clear that nobody really understood the 'no interruptions' injunction in this conversation. "If he's a threat to the Realm, and he's taking over all these territories, how come Venger hasn't decided to, like, do something about it? I mean, after we saw him deal with Kelek, it's kinda obvious that he doesn't stand for competition."

"The Duke of Darkness is a *potential* threat," Dungeon Master repeated with emphasis. "The lands he as taken are relatively small, and though at one time he was a servant of Venger's, as a conqueror in his own right, he has not yet made himself truly worthy of Venger's notice. Perhaps that will change, perhaps it will not. His potential to become a threat to Venger depends entirely on whether he pursues that which Venger claims as his own."

"And what a mess *that* will be," Diana commented thoughtfully. "Ticking off Venger is never pretty. Well, I suppose that would teach this Duke a thing or three."

"Indeed," Dungeon Master agreed. "As with all, our potential lies not only in the decisions we make, but how we accept the consequences those decisions bring."

It was a fairly neutral comment, and Dungeon Master looked neither right nor left when he said it, but Presto was nearly convinced that it was directed specifically at him. And that Dungeon Master hadn't been talking about the Duke of Darkness at all.

"So what's this got to do with us?" Bobby chimed in, entirely missing the subtext that Presto was reading. "Sounds like if he keeps doin' what he's doin', then Venger's gonna notice and he's gonna take care of this Duke guy for us!"

"Meyaaah, morrr uhhhs!" Uni agreed enthusiastically, nodding her head vigorously.

"Perhaps this is true. But until such time as Venger takes notice," Dungeon Master countered, "hundreds more will suffer and die amidst squalor and decay. Their deaths would mean nothing to either the Duke of Darkness or to Venger. Such travesty must not be allowed to continue. But the task is not without reward, my pupils. You might ask how it is that the Duke of Darkness can domineer so many lands at once, while barely requiring an army to back him."

Dungeon Master paused for a long, dramatic moment. The only sound was a few pops from the camp fire and a well-timed rustle of a breeze in the trees. Finally, it was Eric who bit. Still leaned back in his state of casual ease, he asked with a noticeable dose of sarcasm, "Gee, Dungeon Master. I have to ask how the Duke of Darkness can domineer so many lands at once if he barely requires an army to back him up."

"And well you should, Cavalier," Dungeon Master answered evenly. It was almost becoming a game any more, and despite the fact that they all knew it, a multitude of grins were duly stifled. "Much of the Duke's power lies in his ability to circumvent a city's defenses, and to do so quickly and with no warning. He travels neither by land nor by air, but by the use of a mystic Sphere of ancient origin, imbued with the power to bend space around itself, bringing together points that may otherwise be hundreds or even thousands of miles apart. Merely by exerting his will and focus on the Sphere, in one step the Duke of Darkness is able to travel anywhere that he can visualize."

"So that's just like teleporting," Bobby reasoned, scratching Uni's ears proudly. "Like what Unicorns can do!"

"Precisely, Barbarian," Dungeon Master agreed. "Though over much greater distances. As I said, anywhere the bearer of the Sphere can visualize."

"Great, but, uh ..." Presto began hesitantly, "how is that a reward for us?"

"I suppose the answer to that depends on one thing," Dungeon Master replied thoughtfully. "Are you able to visualize your home?"

It took less than one second for everyone to see the bigger picture that Dungeon Master was painting for them. Even Eric sat up with sudden attention. "So ... let me make sure I understand here. This Sphere thingy isn't limited to just teleporting around this world?" he asked intently. "We can wish ourselves to a completely different planet?"

"Such a possibility has not yet occurred to the Duke of Darkness," Dungeon Master explained. "But the space around us can bend and fold in ways beyond our imagination. To the Sphere, distance is but an abstract. Origin and destination are simply two points to be brought together."

"Good to know," Eric said with a nod as the others looked at one another with tempered optimism. The Cavalier leaned back into his state of relaxation, but this time with a genuine smile on his face. "Really, really good to know."

"Even better to know would be how to find this Duke guy," Diana suggested. "You just said 'the lands to the West'." She paused to sweep her arm wide, covering an entire quarter of the compass in one gesture as she leaned with her other arm casually on her Staff. "That's a lot of territory."

"Entering the Duke of Darkness's keep uninvited is nearly impossible to someone whose power does not match his own," Dungeon Master explained with a shake of his head. "Instead, consider the territories he has conquered. On the brink of capitulation to the Duke is the city of Dastirum, in the heart of the Uaine Flatlands. Though he is distant, his focus is there."

"So," Hank reasoned, figuring he wasn't going to get in trouble for interrupting since just about everyone else had already done it, "we go to this Dastirum place, make enough noise to get the Duke's attention, and he shows up by way of the Sphere to try and stop us."

"Indeed," Dungeon Master agreed.

"Any chance you'll let us know how to get to Dastirum?" Hank asked hopefully.

"The path is yours to follow, but for at least some of the way, you will have a guide," Dungeon Master began, which earned a strange sound from Bobby.

"No way!" the Barbarian exclaimed. "The last guide we had turned out to be Venger in disguise! He's prob'ly gonna show up and make think he's Human so he can try to get even--"

"Bobby!" Sheila scolded, laying a restraining hand on her little brother's shoulder. "I don't think Dungeon Master would set us up for something like that. Would he?" she added, directing her gaze at Dungeon Master and making her tone stop just short of sounding like a challenge.

"At the moment," Dungeon Master answered calmly, "Venger is, as you would say, lying low and is unlikely to offer you any trouble for some time."

"Well, yeah," Presto muttered. "I mean, after the way we scared the bejabbers out of him, he's probably too busy changing his shorts to even think about leaving his castle!"

"Your guide," Dungeon Master continued as if he hadn't heard a thing, "was once what you are now. He will proclaim himself as such, and he will know you before you know him. Though he may not be entirely Human," he added with a glance of acknowledgment towards Bobby, "his trustworthiness is beyond reproach, and his knowledge of the Duke of Darkness is something you might find invaluable. And it seems your dinner is beginning to burn."

"What?!" Diana exclaimed, just as Sheila let out a desperate, "Oh, no!" Quickly, they all turned to dive towards the fire, trying to save the meats and vegetables they'd worked so hard to gather. But no more than two steps were taken by any of them before they realized what they were looking at. Though the fish were sizzling nicely over the open flames, and the vegetable stew was bubbling happily away, no part of their dinner was even approaching a charred state.

They all stared in silent disbelief.

"Did he ... *seriously* just trick us into looking away?" Sheila asked slowly, looking at Hank, who had given in to the urge to slap his forehead.

"Yeah ... and we seriously fell for it," the Ranger replied with an exasperated sigh.

It was no use to even act surprised, they all knew Dungeon Master was long gone. So instead, Diana turned to Eric, the only one who had not moved to rescue their dinner. He remained where he was, kicked back and relaxed, arms behind his head as he leaned against the fallen log, eyes still closed. She nudged one of his greaves with her toe. "So, did you get all that?" she asked.

Eric's eyes immediately popped open. "Got it," he said, sounding surprisingly serious. "Duke of Darkness, lands to the West, very little military force, systematically driving villages and cities into capitulation through fear alone, slowly expanding his conquered territory." He paused and flashed Diana a brilliant grin. "Want to hear the rest of it?"

"No, I'd rather not be confused twice before dinner," the Acrobat answered, bending down to pat Eric's head. "Just as long as you've got it all stored up there in your noodle for us when we need it."

"Ya know, that's kinda freaky how you can do that," Bobby chimed in as Eric batted Diana's hand away, then changed his mind and accepted it when she offered it to help him stand.

"Do what, remember what Dungeon Master says, word for word?" Eric asked, brushing stray leaves and bark off the back of his cape. "I finally figured out that knowing the exact words makes all the difference, kid. Close just doesn't cut it." He paused thoughtfully, and then admitted, "But I gotta say, for whatever reason, it's gotten a lot easier since I spent a day *being* Dungeon Master." He took a long moment to reflect back on that strange, strange day, then shrugged it off entirely in light of far more important matters. "I'm starving. What's for dinner?"

"Venison," Diana deadpanned as the aroma of roasting fish wafted towards them. "And you know, what you just said, I think you're right. About the day you spent being the Dungeon Master. We've all noticed it. Ever since Darkhaven, you really have been able to help us a lot with Dungeon Master's riddles." Draping one arm over Eric's shoulder, she leaned close and informed him conspiratorially, "I bet you're even starting to think more like him."

Eric leveled her with a glare. "Like I said before," he reminded, "there's no need to be insulting."


	2. The Guide

_This chapter begins a shout-out to everyone in the D&D Cartoon online community who played the Circle Of Power message-board based roleplay. Let me assure the reader that you do not have to have played CoP to understand what's going on here because this story is not set in that game's continuity. However, players will recognize cameos of a few of my original characters, and the Kingdom of Yarfell was a location invented by all participants as the game progressed._

**ooo**

**Dastirum**

Chapter 2: The Guide

**ooo**

Ten minutes after Dungeon Master had disappeared, it occurred to the group that there was one simple bit of information they had neglected to ask. Just where were they supposed to meet this guide who would set them on the path to Dastirum?

Over dinner, they considered the pros and cons of setting out in a westerly direction that very evening in hopes of meeting their guide on the road, versus staying one more night in their current campsite and heading out the next morning. Eventually, they'd debated long enough that there was only an hour or two of suns-light left anyway. Packing up now would only mean walking about three or four miles before having to find another campsite, and besides, after their large dinner, nobody really wanted to move anyway. In the end, it was a unanimous vote to leave the next morning when everyone was feeling fresh.

When they woke the next morning, breakfast would consist of freshly picked berries, gathered nuts that were ever-so-slightly unripe, and, if they somehow got lucky, the red, diamond-shaped fruit from a tree that seemed to know how to defend itself from all pickers. They'd discovered the laden tree within moments of choosing this campsite, but in the days since, any attempts at gathering the exotic succulents had been little more than a comedy of errors. Anyone who ventured too close to the low-hanging limbs suddenly found him- or herself sprawled flat, unceremoniously tripped by a projecting root that certainly had not been there before, or abruptly slapped with a face full of leaves. At one point the tree had knocked Eric's shield a good fifty feet away, and Presto still didn't know what it had done with the piece of rope he'd conjured in an attempt to lasso one of the branches.

A few moments ago, Diana had attempted to circumvent its defensive perimeter by vaulting directly into the branches. She'd landed perfectly, alighting on a sturdy branch almost fifteen feet in the air, right amongst the heaviest selection of hanging fruit.

The tree, however, wasn't going to stand for that. Quicker than any tree should have been able to move, it picked her up and tossed her right back where she'd started. Then, to add insult to injury, it pitched a soggy, overripe fruit at her, and crossed its branches with surly finality.

She probably should have known that would happen. Two days ago, Bobby had thought he'd accidentally found the solution for them. Absently lobbing a rock at the tree, he'd managed to clip a stem and knock one of the fruits off its limb, and by sheer luck, it had bounced and rolled out of the danger zone surrounding the tree's roots. That was the only sample the gang had, but from that one taste, they all knew that the fruit was delicious enough to pursue despite the tree's resistance. But Bobby's method had never worked a second time. Though the Barbarian had surprisingly good aim, the tree seemed to be on to his tricks, and he'd thrown up his hands in frustration after he realized that the tree was an even better catcher than he was a pitcher. Still, Diana had hoped vainly that the tree wouldn't give her the same treatment it had Bobby's rock collection.

Picking sticky bits of rotten fruit off her outfit, Diana muttered a few uncouth selections under her breath, then, still annoyed, huffily announced that she was going down to the river to rinse the juice off before she started attracting bees. Bees in the Realm, after all, grew to a size of eight feet or larger. Getting up and stalking away, she turned her back on the sight just as Hank, Eric, and Bobby were simultaneously closing in on the tree from different directions, while Presto stood at what they decided was the "front" of the tree, trying to distract it with a strange series of questions that ran in the vein of, "So, have you ever met anyone by the name of Treebeard?"

Diana was almost to the river when she heard three masculine exclamations of "OOOF!" one startled yelp from Bobby, and a more feminine shriek from Sheila, who had just discovered that sneaking around while invisible apparently didn't fool the tree at all. Diana shook her head. She hadn't even needed to see what happened to know the tree had won again. Simple nuts and berries for breakfast was starting to look better all the time.

From her undignified seat on the ground, Sheila was coming to the same conclusion. "You know, I think we have enough stuff for breakfast anyway," she commented as she pushed her hood back and became visible once again. "The tree can keep its fruit if it really wants it that badly."

"Oh, I don't know, I suppose I could chop it down ..." Hank mused loudly as he stood and brushed himself off, then helped Sheila to her feet as well. "Or shoot the branches off, one by one ..." He glanced over his shoulder at the tree as he said so, trying to see if his words had any effect. Truth be told, he had no intention of actually harming the tree. There was no reason to kill it just because it was defending itself, and there was always the dangerous chance that it might be able to catch one of his arrows and lob it back at him. But after he'd seen it throw the fruit at Diana just now, he'd gotten the idea that making a few idle threats might goad it into throwing more.

Sheila saw exactly what Hank was driving at the moment he turned to give her a wink and one of *those* smiles. "Yeah," she agreed, playing along and quickly thinking up a few more threats, "or maybe we could--"

A shriek from the direction of the river cut Sheila's comment short, and the other boys instantly scrambled to their feet when they recognized it was Diana's scream. Stubborn tree forgotten, they raced the short distance to the river through the trees and fern, Weapons drawn.

When they crashed through the underbrush opening up to the river bank, they were brought up short by a bizarre sight. Diana was there, still dripping fruit pulp, poised stock-still in a stance of battle readiness, her Staff brandished before her in a defensive position that could easily be moved to an attack.

Squared off against her was a man in a half-crouch, just as motionless, a leather sling in his raised hand, glowing with cold blue light and ready to hurl its ammunition towards Diana if she made even the tiniest threatening move. He wore black leather armor trimmed in silver, black boots and gauntlets over grey shirt and pants, a sword at his side, and his long black hair loosely past his shoulder blades. Beside him was a magnificent, unsaddled, pure-white mare.

It might have seemed slightly less bizarre had both man and horse not been both standing stock-still on the surface of the river.

As the others burst through the cover of the trees and stopped abruptly, the man's dark eyes quickly darted towards these newcomers. It was hard to tell who was more surprised.

But before any demands could be made of either side to drop weapons and surrender, the stranger did something that might have raised some questions about his sanity. "Ah," he said with a nod, sounding like someone who had just connected several facts. Rising fearlessly out of his aggressive crouch, he tucked the no longer glowing sling into his belt. "I was not expecting to find you so soon," he added, before half-turning and shouting behind him, "I would perhaps appreciate a warning of more than two scant minutes next time!"

Fewer trees grew on the opposite bank of the river, which made it easy to see that there was no one there for this man to address. If he had allies lying in wait, the were either as invisible as Sheila, or else they were entirely imaginary.

"Okay, pal, just keep your hands where we can see them," Hank finally said after giving up trying to figure out what the man was doing, or how in the world he was standing on top of the water. "And who's over there that you're talking to?"

"Likely, no one any more," the man replied calmly, with an amused shake of his head as he showed his empty hands. "He is long gone by now. A former mentor of mine who came to ask a favor. I believe you know him? About so tall," here he bent slightly and indicated someone very short, "elderly fellow, always wears red robes, completely bald were it not for his long white hair, can't make a straightforward comment to save his life?"

Several Weapons wavered just slightly, uncertainly. But no defenses were dropped completely. "You ... mean Dungeon Master?" Presto asked hesitantly. "You know Dungeon Master?"

"Indeed, I was once a student of his," the man agreed, and, of all things, his horse snorted and gave two great nods of its head. It almost looked like the times that Uni enthusiastically agreed with Bobby. "This was my gift from him," he explained, indicating the Sling he had tucked into his belt. "And you are his current pupils. I recognize some of those Weapons."

Trust was not something easily given in this world. The gang had long since learned that the fairest face and the finest speeches could hide the foulest heart, and this refined-sounding stranger was in fact more fair of face than most men. This could have been a trap. But the man's words struck a particular chord.

"He was a student of ol' DM," Eric whispered behind his shield, sidling a little closer to Hank so the stranger wouldn't hear him. "And that's what we are. That's what the Pipsqueak said ... our guide was once what we are now and would proclaim himself as such."

"And what else did Dungeon Master say? Something about he'd know who we were?" Hank asked softly, never relaxing the draw on his Bow or taking his eyes off the strange man, who was currently looking down at the water beneath his feet with interest.

"He'll know us before we know him," Eric recited quietly, "and that he's not be entirely Human, but he's trustworthy beyond reproach, and he knows about the Duke of Darkness."

"Well ..." Hank reasoned after a moment's pause, "it certainly seems like he knew to be expecting us personally, even if we don't have a clue who he is."

"Yeah," Bobby added, a little more loudly than everyone else, "but he's not s'posed to be Human ..."

The man's head abruptly popped up, and he said with a rather merry twinkle, "Are you speaking of me or my horse, young man? Because Hwesta is female."

"Wha ...?" Bobby asked, taking a startled step backwards. Busted.

"But all jesting aside," the man continued, looking back towards his feet, "would you mind terribly if I stepped onto the bank? This ice is thin and will melt soon, and I don't particularly care to take a bath in my leathers."

Ice? Now that their attention had been directed to it, a crystal-clear sheet of ice could barely be seen stretching across the river, and on this, the man and his horse stood. It was neither frosted nor glistening, and blended in like a pane of glass over the clear water. The only way anyone could see it from this angle was to notice where there weren't any ripples on the surface of the slow river.

Ice. In the middle of summer.

Hank glanced quickly at Eric, who gave a little shrug. He'd repeated everything he could remember and the man seemed to fit Dungeon Master's description. Then Hank's eyes flicked over to his other side. "Diana?" he asked.

"He ... didn't actually attack me or anything," the Acrobat admitted after a moment, though she hadn't relaxed one bit during this entire confrontation. "I just came down here, and here's this guy out in the middle of nowhere, *walking* across the *water.* I didn't know who he was or what he's doing, so I grabbed my Staff, he grabbed his Sling about the same time, and the next thing I knew, it's a standoff." She looked a little embarrassed by what she'd done. "It wasn't really an attack," she repeated. "More like we startled each other, we both just reacted and then we were both stuck."

"I'd say that is a fair assessment, and I do apologize for my hastiness," the man agreed, then pointed down at the sheet of ice beneath his feet. "Melting?" he reminded.

"All right," Hank finally decided after weighing both Eric and Diana's input. "It sounds like you're the one Dungeon Master told us about. So come on up to dry land and tell us who you are and what you're doing out here." As he lowered his Bow, Diana retracted her Staff and Presto put his Hat back on his head. Bobby didn't lower his Club, though, still worried about the 'not Human' thing that Dungeon Master had mentioned.

"I thank you," the man said, beckoning to his horse as he walked carefully, testing the ice with his toe before each step. It was a little too thin at the edge to support their weight, so he made a leap onto the bank with enough nimbleness to make even Diana raise her eyebrows. A second later, the white mare jumped and landed neatly beside him, shaking her mane delicately and then lifting a front leg as if she were striking a heroic pose.

"Yes, Hwesta. Well done," the man complimented wryly. "Now then, introductions are in-"

He stopped short, surprised, his hand darting to the hilt of his sword in a smooth but completely reflexive motion. Before he jumped to the bank, there had been five young adventurers standing there. Suddenly there were six.

His sword was drawn about halfway out of its sheath at the abrupt appearance of the red-haired girl in the purple Cloak, when several things happened at once. The little boy with the Club lunged with a war-cry to defend this newcomer from attack, the young man in expensive-looking chain mail raised his Shield and tried to interpose himself between the sword and the girl when she gasped in fright, but the young man who seemed to be the leader of this group had darted into that defensive position first.

"Don't! She's with us!" the youth in Ranger's leathers shouted.

The swordsman froze, as did everyone else. His eyes flicked between the alarmed-looking girl to the Ranger then back to the girl, then quickly to the other four members of this small group before falling back on the girl. Obviously, none of the other youths seemed the least bit concerned by her sudden presence, and in fact had jumped to defend her. She looked genuinely frightened by the swiftly drawn sword, clutching the Ranger's arm with one hand as he stood protectively in front of her, her other hand poised to raise her hood over her head ...

"Ah," the man said carefully when recognition finally registered. "Yes. *That* Cloak. Of course." Snapping the sword back into its sheath, he raised his hands to show that there was nothing dangerous in them. "A word of caution, my dear," he said with perfect politeness. "As I have regrettably demonstrated twice now, even the most well-meaning adventurer tends to get a bit jumpy after spending several days alone in the woods. Perhaps you would all consider not startling me quite so badly in the future?"

"I ... I'm sorry?" came the hesitant, almost embarrassed reply.

"My apologies, as well," he answered with a nod, then seemed to mentally count to three before letting out a calming breath. "Now then, clearly we have gotten off on the wrong foot. Dungeon Master meant for us to be allies, so let us not disappoint him by killing one another instead. Young man," he said, turning his attention to the little terror that seemed ready to start smashing him to pieces, "if you would kindly lower your Club? It is difficult to make introductions when being threatened with imminent bodily harm."

Bobby hesitated, unsure of what to do. He still didn't trust this stranger, especially not after the guy had threatened to hurt his sister. And was this supposed to be their guide? People who had offered to guide them before had turned out to be anything from a demonic spider-queen to Venger himself, and Bobby had just about had enough of it. But as he glanced around, he saw that the others were slowly relaxing, apparently willing to give the man the benefit of the doubt. To be fair, Sheila really had just appeared suddenly, and now that everyone was calming down, they could see that the man had honestly reacted out of pure reflex to a perceived threat, nothing more than any of them would have done. After all this time of seeing Sheila use the Cloak, sometimes they all forgot how startling it must look to someone who didn't know.

But what really convinced Bobby, and everyone else -- though Eric would never confess to it out loud -- was Uni. Something about the man had caught her attention, and as tensions eased a bit, she edged forward, curiously, her eyes intent, studying him with sharp interest. He smiled at her when he noticed her scrutiny, and bent down slowly, pulling off a gauntlet to offer his hand as if she were a curious puppy. That image was reinforced as she sniffed at his fingers carefully, then brightened happily, her ears and tail flicking up as she let out a cheerful bleat. She liked him.

"Ah. It seems I pass the test," the man said, for even a baby Unicorn's approval was no small thing. "Now then, I should think that introductions are finally in order. I am," and here he gave a formal bow as if his audience were regal nobles in a royal court rather than six rag-tag kids in the middle of the woods, "Tolan, Lord of House Halloran of Yarfell."

**ooo**

After a round of introductions and explanations, Lord Tolan, who, despite being a former student of Dungeon Master, turned out to be a life-long denizen of the Realm and not someone from another world like themselves, was led by the curious gang back to their campsite. There, his face immediately lit up at the sight of the bright red fruit hanging tantalizingly from the grouchy tree. "Ah! Lovely!" he exclaimed, sounding like he had not yet had breakfast, either. Before anyone could think to offer a warning, he walked boldly and fearlessly right up to the tree.

"Wait! Don't!" both Hank and Diana managed to shout over each other, while Eric cringed in expectation and said, "This is gonna be bad!"

They weren't certain if they'd been heard or not. Lord Tolan didn't react to their warnings, but stopped just out of the reach of the branches and gave the tree a bow as stately as the one he had offered the kids earlier. "_Mae govannen_," he addressed the tree. "_Lín galas eglerialim, a lín eredh peliavan palan. Lín yávë nuva?_"

The tree didn't move. The kids didn't breathe. Lord Tolan's confidence did not waver. Then, there was a slight rustle amongst the leaves, and suddenly one of the ripe, red fruits dropped from a limb so that Lord Tolan could easily catch it in his gloved hand. It was swiftly followed by a second and a third.

Everyone else stared in disbelief. They'd expected Lord Tolan to be on the ground, spitting leaves just like they had all done repeatedly over the past several days, not collecting fruit that the tree was freely and helpfully offering. "He ... *talked* to the tree?" Diana said in annoyed disbelief, still peeved over her latest defeat at the tree's hands. Or branches. Whatever. "He just *asked* it for some fruit?"

"Certainly," Tolan agreed cheerfully as he turned from the tree with an armload of the fleshy red diamonds. "Manners will get you everywhere. Now, I believe I have enough ruby pears for everyone," he added, placing the fruit on one of Presto's previously conjured blankets that the Magician hastily spread on the ground with Eric's help, while Bobby went to fetch the nuts and berries they had gathered earlier. From a pack that was girdled around his horse's shoulders, Lord Tolan produced a cloth bag that had the distinct aroma of baked goods, and placed it on the blanket next to the fruit. "The day is young and we have plenty of time to answer questions as we eat. Whatever assistance Dungeon Master feels I can offer, I will be happy to give. But first, I'd wager you're wondering why a nobleman such as myself is traveling through the woods alone," he guessed with a self-deprecating grin, seating himself and picking out one of the ruby pears. As he did so, he glanced around at this intriguing puzzle that was the current group of Dungeon Master's pupils, measuring them up carefully. From the place called Earth, he guessed, just like the small group that he had fallen in with so many years ago. He wondered if these children had any idea for what purpose the Realm had brought them into itself.

"Yeah, I gotta admit, I was wondering that," Diana admitted, whacking a nut with the end of her retracted Staff, neatly breaking the shell. By this time, she had written off the standoff at the river as a simple misunderstanding, and now curiosity was getting the better of her. This wasn't just a chance encounter, it sounded like Dungeon Master had specifically made arrangements for them to meet. Dungeon Master usually didn't directly interfere like that. "You sure fooled me -- mostly we see noblemen traveling with armed guards and some sort of escort."

Lord Tolan sliced into the pear with a small knife from his boot, carefully preserving the pit as everyone else sat with him on the blanket around their collective breakfast. "In most cases, that's true. Foolish, as I see it, but true. In my mind, escorts and guards and banners and entourages are the best way in the world to announce your presence and status to every highwayman from here to Realm's Edge. Despite the fact that it drives my wife and my Queen batty to have me gallivanting around alone like this, I believe it is safer than painting a target on my back by proclaiming myself to the world. Save the pits, if you will," he added as the others bit into the ruby pears. "The tree shared its bounty on the promise that I would plant them."

This earned him a few looks of vague disbelief, but the kids dutifully set aside the walnut-sized pits they discovered inside the sweet, succulent fruit. It had been over a year since the kids' arrival in the Realm, and several of them reasoned silently that talking trees really shouldn't come as a surprise after all that time. If planting a few pits was what the tree asked in exchange for such an unbelievably delicious breakfast, then it was worth it.

"You know, guys ... last time we met some rich guy traveling alone," Eric said with a slightly theatrical tone of suspicion, "turns out he was the King of Khadish in disguise."

"King Rahmoud? I've met him, recently," Tolan admitted, quickly giving the Cavalier a critical eye as he did so. Here was a person who had known money all his life, the nobleman assessed silently, and who was only now beginning to know himself. A fortunate young man, then. Many of the wealthy he personally knew had never gotten that far. Then suddenly, realization dawned on Tolan's handsome face as another piece of the puzzle dropped itself neatly into place. "Oh! You, then! You're the ones of whom he spoke so highly! Well, then, it is indeed an honor to meet you." Somehow, he managed another regal bow despite the fact that he was sitting cross-legged on the ground.

This revelation brought a moment of surprised silence, before Sheila asked, "You met Rahmoud? And he talked about us?" Her fondness for the old King clear in her voice. If Lord Tolan had an amicable acquaintance with the man they could all have easily claimed as a second father, then that raised the nobleman another step higher in her estimation.

"At great length," Tolan nodded, "as he and I have in common the fact that we have both known other pupils of Dungeon Master. He is a great and generous man, and you were all very dear to him, that much was clear. If you ever tire of questing for a way back to your own world, know that you will always have a home in Khadish."

"That's ... wow," Diana said, sounding deeply touched that Rahmoud would speak so fondly of them even to complete strangers. "But ..." here she quickly reached for a piece of the travelers' waybread that Tolan had supplied, to hide the fact that her eyes had misted over for just a slight moment. "Um, I think we're going to keep trying to find out way home for now."

"What she said," Eric agreed, slyly studying Lord Tolan and assessing him as thoroughly as the nobleman was assessing them. The dots were almost visibly connecting behind his eyes. "So, let me get this straight ... you're a rich, fancy nobleman, trying to keep a low profile about your status, and you personally know the King of Khadish, huh?"

Tolan gave the Cavalier a genuine smile. "Good sir, are you about to accuse me of being King Tolan the First? I do not rule Yarfell. Our kingdom is ruled by a Queen, daughter of our last King who passed away three years ago. But come, Dungeon Master implied that we shall travel together for several days, so there is plenty of time to get to know one another later. Let us instead get to the heart of the matter that brings us together like this. You mentioned something about the Duke of Darkness. What is it that you need to know?"

"I wanna know what you're supposed to be if you're not Human!" Bobby blurted, much to the chagrin of his sister, who unsuccessfully tried to shush him.

Tolan merely smiled, realizing they were going to get nowhere until the boy's belligerent curiosity was indulged. Wiping the red pear juice off his hands, he swept his long hair back away from his face. The motion immediately drew everyone's gaze to his ears. They were pointed.

Bobby's eyes widened and he nearly fell over backwards. Dungeon Master was telling the truth, this guy wasn't Human! "He's a ... a ... a Vulcan!"

Uni gave a disgusted snort and rolled her eyes. "Meeeeelf!" she bleated at Bobby, as if that explained everything.

"He's an Elf!" Presto translated, his jaw dropping slightly and his eyes lighting up with sheer awe. The geeky portion of his brain that had read _Lord of the Rings_ every year since he was ten nearly exploded with excitement. "Wow! I don't believe it! You're a real Elf!" They had heard that Elves lived in the forests of this world, but until now, despite their many adventures in just as many forests, had never met one.

And, in fact, they still hadn't met one. "No, I'm afraid I'm not an Elf by very much," Tolan said with a small shake of his head. He noted that the revelation had at last drawn Presto 'actually my real name is Al but nobody calls me that' the Magician out of his shell for the moment. He struck Tolan as rather shy, a bit unsure of himself, and that there seemed to be something else preoccupying the boy's mind as well, which piqued the nobleman's curiosity. It was a puzzle unto itself, one that Tolan might delve into later. For now, he owed these children more of an explanation. "My great-great grandfather was an Elf. I've inherited the ears, and a few other Elvish traits. So as you can see, I am indeed not entirely Human. Now then, young man, are you satisfied that Dungeon Master has vouched for me?" he asked the little Barbarian.

"Um ... well ..." Bobby answered, which caused Tolan an amused smirk. Bobby 'yeah that's short for Robert but I like Bobby' the Barbarian seemed to him a resilient child -- Tolan would dearly love to know the story behind how he'd acquired a baby Unicorn -- and somehow he sensed this was a normal display of the boy's stubborn nature.

"Bobby," Sheila scolded with practiced ease, which essentially verified Lord Tolan's assessment of the child, "give it a rest. I think Dungeon Master made it pretty clear that we can trust him, all right?"

"As he told me the same of all of you," Tolan agreed with a nod in her direction. A piece of the puzzle that he didn't even know was missing fell into place when he noticed then that sweet little Sheila 'hi I'm Bobby's sister' the Thief and mature-for-his-age Hank 'please don't ask me what that's short for' the Ranger had seated themselves a little closer together than 'just friends' would indicate. So he hadn't just imagined something significant in the way the petite redhead had gripped the Ranger's arm when he'd jumped to defend her at the river. Interesting. Usually Dungeon Master discouraged that sort of fraternization amongst his pupils. "But, be that as it may," Tolan continued so smoothly that no one noticed him pause for anything more than to polish off his last bite of ruby pear. "I know Dungeon Master well enough to know that he would not have told you everything. Where do you wish I begin?"

"Well, start anywhere, and tell us everything from there," Diana answered. Other than perhaps for Bobby, the general consensus was to accept both Dungeon Master's words and their own instincts that this stranger in their midst was someone whose advice they could trust. "About the Duke of Darkness, I mean. All we know that he's trying to take over some territory in the West, so that's where we're heading. Dungeon Master says he has something that might get us home, but we have to go get his attention and make him to bring it to us."

"Straightforward as ever," Tolan smiled wryly. He didn't need to make any assessment of Diana the Acrobat, since he'd already gotten a highly accurate first impression at the river. She was a lovely, intelligent, if a bit impetuous, woman who should never, ever be crossed. He frowned, thoughtfully, popping one of the fat berries into his mouth as he did so. "As much as I enjoy puzzles, I must say that Dungeon Master was effectively vague enough as to give me no clue as to your destination. As for me, I am returning home to Yarfell Proper, after a mission of diplomacy for Her Majesty the Queen." Here he glanced aside, and muttered, more to himself than anyone else, "And hopefully my little sister has not convinced the Queen to decree that the entire city be painted pink in my absence." He shook his head with a fond smile and continued aloud, "I doubt that Dungeon Master wants me to lead you there. I can tell you for certain that the Duke of Darkness has not shown his face in the capital city for several years."

"You've seen him?" Hank asked, suddenly leaning forward attentively. Eric didn't have to remind him that, according to Dungeon Master, Tolan's knowledge of the Duke of Darkness would prove invaluable. "What happened? Did he attack your city?"

"He tried," Tolan said with a laugh, reaching for another pear. Rather than slice into it, he tossed it in the air, over his shoulder, where it was abruptly and noisily caught mid-arc in the mouth of his mare, Hwesta. She munched her breakfast serenely, then her velvety lips worked for a moment, and she daintily spat the pit onto the small but growing pile that Tolan was collecting. "Now then," he said, completely unfazed by what the horse had done. "To answer your question, about five years ago, the Duke of Darkness did try to attack the capital. It was near dawn one morning when this very hideous man-thing in savage, onyx armor simply appeared atop the city walls, shouting dire threats for the whole city to hear. I don't know how he amplified his voice as he did, but his shouting woke the entire populace. We never saw an army, but he demanded we surrender within the hour, or in his wrath he would place a terrible curse on the entire city."

"What kind of curse?" Hank asked intently, urging Tolan to continue when he paused. On the opposite side of the circle of seated people, Eric looked just as intent. Obviously he was memorizing every word as if Dungeon Master himself had spoken them.

"We ... aren't certain," Tolan said, and he smiled to himself at some humorous thought. "The Duke's mistake was that he attacked at such an early hour. A friend of mine, the Court Wizard, Echlar, sincerely dislikes being woken before the last sun rises. It makes him very grouchy. So much so that as the Duke was still shouting about this curse, Echlar leaned out his chamber window and blasted the him right off the wall without a word." At that, Tolan gave in and laughed out loud at the memory. "Then he went straight back to bed. Most of us hadn't even gotten our trousers on, much less rallied to the defense of the city by the time it was all over. The Duke has steered clear of Yarfell Proper since then. Of course, Echlar strengthened the city's magical defenses in response to the threat, and the Clerics of the Order of the Great Lady placed a blessing on our fair city. If the Duke made a second attempt, any curse he threw at us would simply slide off our walls. So unless he has changed his mind and reappeared with a show of purely physical force in the two weeks I've been absent, I can assure you that you won't find him making any headway against Yarfell Proper."

"No, Dungeon Master didn't say we're going to anyplace called Yarfell," Diana said with a glance towards Eric for confirmation. "He said we're to follow you part of the way, but that we're supposed to end up somewhere called Dastirum."

The change was instantaneous. Gone was the relaxed, slightly amused expression. In its place was intense, controlled alarm, and Tolan jerked so suddenly straight that it almost looked like he was going to leap right over the picnic breakfast at Diana. "What about Dastirum?" he demanded, danger seething in his voice. It was not directed at any of the kids.

"It's ... where Dungeon Master told us to go," Diana began hesitantly, momentarily thrown by how badly and how swiftly the news had affected Lord Tolan.

"He said that the Duke of Darkness is focused there," Eric added, filling in the blank when Diana stopped speaking. The news clearly agitated Lord Tolan, but Eric nonetheless told him everything they knew. "It's on the point of capitulation. Dungeon Master said he's -- I mean the Duke -- is trying to take it, and that there's, what did he say? Lots of squalor and decay, and people are dying."

Tolan listened intently, and when Eric finished speaking, his dark eyes seemed to unfocus for a moment, staring off into the distance as he thought hard. "No news of this has reached the capital," he finally said, shaking his head. "Otherwise, I can assure you that Yarfell would have responded." He thought a moment longer, then realized he should explain himself further. "Dastirum is a frontier city-state on the southwestern edge of the Kingdom of Yarfell, and deserves our protection. It is a three-day march from the capital to Dastirum. We do not maintain terribly close contact, I'm afraid, but that is mostly due to our two cities producing many of the same goods. We have no need for direct trade relations. However, it is not so far that a messenger could not have called for aid. I must find out if this is true. If the Duke of Darkness has attacked Dastirum, then he has attacked Yarfell and will answer for it. How long has this been going on?"

All eyes turned back to Eric, who shook his head. "Ol' DM didn't say."

"I see," Tolan nodded slowly, rising and pacing a few steps away from the breakfast blanket as he considered Eric's news. "It must have been at some point in the last seven or eight months," he reasoned, mostly to himself. "Dastirum sent representatives to Yarfell Proper for the Midwinter festival, and they spoke of nothing amiss at the time."

"Maybe they couldn't send any messengers?" Presto suggested. "After they were attacked? The Duke could have stopped them somehow."

"It's possible," Tolan conceded. "Dastirum does not have quite the defenses of Yarfell Proper, nor has the Order of the Great Lady established a temple there. Did Dungeon Master tell you what sort of curse the Duke has called down upon them?"

"Um," Eric said, realizing the floor had been turned over to him again. "Well, in a word, no. We were kinda hoping maybe you'd know."

Tolan digested this for a moment. "Perhaps Echlar should not have blasted the Duke so hastily back then," he mused. "We might have found out more about the curse he was going to place on the city, and perhaps more about how to combat it. As it is, if I remember truly, we found no implements that might have aided him in placing a curse, nor any traces of residual magic. The Duke had given us an hour to surrender, but he was blasted off the wall within one minute, so obviously he never had time to call his curse down upon our city. Several Wizards together found nothing, other than traces of the power of the item he used to travel so quickly. We have no clear idea of what he ultimately intended to do, nor how he planned to do it."

"But even if he didn't actually manage to curse your city, it sounds like there's more than a good chance that he's been able to do it to Dastirum," Hank said. It wasn't really a question.

"It sounds similar to what I've seen before," Tolan answered uncomfortably as he sat cross-legged on the blanket again. It had been a long time since he'd willingly thought about what he'd witnessed in his youth. Pausing a moment to reflect, he reached back over the years to describe the few examples of the Duke's handiwork that had encountered in his younger days as an adventurer. Villages, cities, even castles, all once-thriving but now dead or decaying, blighted and broken, having been crushed under the weight of some unknown oppression. By Tolan's estimation, he had come across about a dozen such places in his years in the wilds. In some of these festering hell-holes, people still lived, if living it could be called. The only spark of emotion any of those poor, destroyed souls had shown was the raw fear at the mention of the Duke of Darkness who had destroyed their lives. Other victims had fared even worse, and through crumbling bits of abandoned journals, circumstantial clues, and grisly discoveries, he and his friends fitted the pieces together to realize that entire populations had been driven to insanity, dying off and, most horribly, continuing on in the rotting shells of their homes and villages as horrific, restless, undead things that stirred endlessly, vainly seeking an end to their madness.

Left defenseless or even uninhabited, these were the lands that the Duke of Darkness was able to claim as his own, unopposed, never needing the destructive power of a conquering army. The description reminded the kids uncomfortably of the zombies they had disturbed in a moldering shack while seeking the Spellbinder Lukion.

"Those poor people," Sheila finally said when Tolan had finished his tale. She'd slipped her small hand into Hank's as they'd listened to Tolan's story, unconsciously seeking some amount of comfort in the face of the chilling pictures the nobleman was painting. "Do you think we'll be able to help them?"

Hank gave her fingers a reassuring squeeze. "We've broken curses before," he answered, smiling confidently at her before glancing over her shoulder and calling, "Right, Presto?"

"Huh? We ... we what?" Presto stammered, caught off-guard by the sudden attention.

"Broke a curse. You remember," Diana said, giving Presto a friendly jab in the ribs. "Helix?"

"Oh, uh. Yeah. I guess," Presto answered, sounding thoroughly unconvinced. Adjusting his glasses, which had slipped down his nose when Diana jostled him, he quickly turned the conversation back to Lord Tolan. "What about you? Can you help us out? I mean, you know, maybe come with us?"

Lord Tolan didn't answer right away; he was contemplating what the Acrobat had said about Helix. He knew the name but was a little vague on the location, for Helix wasn't part of the Kingdom of Yarfell. Dragons ... hadn't he heard something about an incident with dragons a year or so ago? A curse, perhaps, but the involvement of dragons indicated it was likely not cursed by the Duke of Darkness. And the curse had already been broken, according to Diana, so the people of Helix likely did not require Yarfell to come to their aid. After this reflective pause, Tolan finally answered Presto's question. "No, I'll not be going to Dastirum."

"What? Wait, why not?" Eric blurted. "You know more about what's going on than we do, we need you! You've got to help us!"

"And if Dastirum has fallen under the Duke of Darkness's curse," Tolan countered, "I can best help by returning to Yarfell Proper. There, at least, I can rally aid. Soldiers, supplies, whatever relief is needed, I will have it sent to Dastirum. The six ... er, seven of you," he amended after receiving a glare from a slightly miffed-looking baby Unicorn, "were tasked by Dungeon Master with going to Dastirum, not I. I can lead you as far as the Forest of Yar, which is two days' travel from here. I will then turn north through the forest to Yarfell Proper, and you will continue along the road west for another two days to Dastirum. Come then, let us waste no more time," he said, rising from his seat and gathering the remains of the waybread back into its pack. "The sooner we move, the sooner we will reach our destinations. We still have two days in which I will attempt to tell you everything I know."


	3. The Cursed Lands

**Dastirum**

Chapter 3: The Cursed Lands

**ooo**

Two days of travel stretched through the forest as it thinned into grasslands, meandered along the bank of the river, climbed over low hills and down into rocky valleys. Late summer offered a bountiful wild harvest and fat game as the small group made their way along a well-used, if rutted, dirt road. Along the way, there had been only one incident of any concern, when in passing through a few miles of wooded terrain, the group had been shadowed for a tense hour by a pack of growling, wolf-like creatures. A brief display of Weapons power, when the animals got too close for comfort, quickly convinced them that better hunting could be found elsewhere. Later that same day, some breed of dragon was spotted soaring through the sky, a long distance away. There was some concern that the great beast might spot them and decide they looked like lunch, but Lord Tolan, whose slightly Elvish eyes were sharper than a Human's, identified this particular dragon as nothing that would bring them any harm.

During those two days, the gang spoke at great length of both their homes and families on Earth, and their adventures since arriving in the Realm. In turn, Lord Tolan related everything he could recall about the Duke of Darkness, including what he knew of the object that Dungeon Master implied might get them home. Research done by his friend, the Wizard Echlar, had revealed this mystical Sphere to be an ancient artifact, formed when a collapsing star fell at the exact confluence of four of the most powerful ley lines in the Realm. Or, as Presto had put it, much to Lord Tolan's bafflement, a "portable black hole." He also spoke of his earlier days as a pupil of Dungeon Master before the death of his elder brother had called him back to Yarfell to take his family's hereditary seat on the High Council. Lord Tolan's Weapon, which he had not surrendered upon retiring from active adventuring, was what he called a "Frost Sling," a simple little device of plain-looking leather that was capable of hurling icy energy so cold that anything it hit was completely and instantaneously frozen: "Yes, even the surface of a river when no other way of crossing is available."

"So then your sword's not a Weapon of Power?" Presto asked him as they walked along in a loosely organized group. Since he knew the way, Lord Tolan was in the lead, with Presto walking beside him. Right behind him, Eric was happily riding along on Hwesta's unsaddled back. For generations, the Montgomery family had owned and raised fine-blooded dressage horses, and Eric knew an excellent specimen when he saw one. His glowing compliments on Hwesta's perfect confirmation, high spirit and uncanny intelligence had apparently won the horse over, and she'd deigned to let him ride - for Hwesta was an Elf-bred horse, a gift to Lord Tolan from his cousins amongst the Wood Elves. One does not ride an Elf-horse, he had explained, so much as she agrees to bear you as a rider. Uni cantered around gaily behind the larger equine, playing some sort of game of tag with Bobby, the two of them nearly running over Diana who was taking her turn keeping an eye on the youngsters. Hank was bringing up the rear, though as usual, Sheila had fallen back a bit from the rest of the group and was now walking beside him.

"Goodness, no, the sword is just a sword, though a nice, sharp piece of metal certainly has its uses," Tolan replied to Presto's question. "I had the sword first and did not give it up merely because I received the Sling. Before that, I was a simple youth out for adventure, who just happened to be at the right place at the right time when a portal opened and brought four boys from your world into ours. I was ... fighting off a wyvern at the time, if I remember correctly. I, of course, had no idea who these boys were or why they were there, but they were disoriented and defenseless, so I protected them as best I could. Dungeon Master arrived only a few minutes after I'd chased off the wyvern, gave Weapons to all of them, gave the Sling to me, and the next thing I knew, I was somehow a pupil of his along with the rest of them, despite all my protests."

"Wait a minute ... Dungeon Master didn't show up until after the portal brought that group of kids through?" Presto asked. "How did he open it if he wasn't there?"

"Open it?" Tolan looked vaguely puzzled. "Dungeon Master has nothing to do with the portals like the one that brought you here, just as he has no control over the ones that might some day lead you back to your world. It is the Realm itself that opens them. Certainly, Dungeon Master is attuned to the magic of them, being what he is. He knows when they are going to open, and in some cases knows what must be done to cause them to open, but he neither creates nor controls them. When he knows one is about to open into this world, he tries to protect anyone coming through, as he protected you, and when he knows of one about to open back into your world, he informs you, does he not?"

"Well, he does, yeah," Presto agreed. "Not like it helps much. Of all the portals we've seen, we've never made it back. Not for more than a few minutes, anyway."

"Then the Realm is not ready to give you up."

"Huh?"

Lord Tolan hesitated, trying to find the words to explain himself. "The Realm... is out of balance. In some ways, one might think of this world as a living thing, which knows when something is wrong. It will bring into itself what it perceives is needed to fix the problem. In the last thousand years, since the rise of the Dark Lord Venger, the scales have been tipped too far towards his evil. The Realm, with Dungeon Master's assistance, has been trying to nudge itself back into a state of equilibrium. The best I can explain it is to say that you are here because the Realm itself chose you and thinks it needs you. Otherwise, you would have been returned home already, and would not have borne those Weapons long." Here, Tolan cast a look over his shoulder, towards the back of their traveling group, where the sun glinted on the hilt of the Sword strapped to Hank's belt as he chatted hand-in-hand with Sheila. "Though I must say, I've not heard of Dungeon Master giving two Weapons to any one pupil before."

"What? Oh, that? The Sword and stuff?" Presto shook his head. "Nah, Dungeon Master didn't give us those. We picked them up about a week ago, in the Dragon's Graveyard."

Lord Tolan stopped mid-step, his jaw literally dropping. This was a story he had not heard yet, though obviously he knew the implications that came with the name of the Dragon's Graveyard. "The bower of the Dragon Queen herself?" he exclaimed incredulously. "What, pray, were you doing there?"

Never slowing or halting his pace, never looking up from the road even once, Presto told him. Everything.

Tolan had begun walking again as he listened to the tale, keeping up with Presto while avoiding being stepped on by Hwesta. The end of the brief story stopped him in his tracks once again.

"Let me be certain I understand," Tolan began, but his horse gave him an irritated snort followed by a forehead shove to his shoulder, which interrupted him completely. "Yes, very well, Hwesta," he muttered, gently but firmly pushing her head to the side and then resuming his walk. "There, I am out of Your Highness's way. But you, my friend, you are saying that you had Venger at your mercy, and in the end, chose to let him go?"

"Well, Hank let him go," Presto corrected hesitantly. "Not me. I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have, if it was up to me. But ... I mean, if you look at the situation, it was the right thing to do, right?"

"Perhaps ..." Tolan drawled thoughtfully. "I suppose that is what mercy is." Neither of them noticed how Eric suddenly sat up attentively, then leaned forward over Hwesta's withers to listen intently to what Presto said. A glimmer of shrewd understanding was beginning to shine in the Cavalier's eyes.

"Yeah, I kinda thought so," Presto sighed.

Suddenly, Uni went galloping crazily past both of them, bleating happily, cheerfully daring Bobby to chase her. The Barbarian was right behind her, utterly ignoring Sheila's and Diana's shouts to stay close and on the road where they could be seen.

Tolan smiled and shook his head at the exuberance of youth, then gave the older boy beside him a critical glance, wondering why the Magician was so displeased with himself for having made what they both agreed was the right decision. Then, as he reflected back on the conversation, a piece of the puzzle that Tolan had been seeking for two days finally fitted itself into place. The Magician had said it himself... the "right" decision was not the one he himself had made. Realization dawned, and for some reason, Tolan found himself glancing at the Cavalier to see if he was paying attention. He certainly was. "Yes, your friend made the right decision... at least, what was most certainly the right decision for him," the nobleman said carefully. "I, however, cannot confidently say that I would have reached that selfsame conclusion."

Presto's head snapped up from where he'd been keeping his gaze locked on the dirt road beneath his feet. "Huh? You wouldn't?"

With a graceful shrug, Tolan explained, "I know what the Dark Lord has done to this Realm, and I can only say that if I weighed an underhanded opportunity to destroy Venger against the tarnish it would leave on my soul, I might find myself choosing the former and willingly accepting the consequences if my sacrifice would accomplish a greater good."

Presto looked a little dumbfounded. "Really? You ... even if it wasn't a fair fight?"

"Having never found myself in the situation you were in, I truly can not know how I would act," Tolan agreed casually. "I do know that your world has a saying about the roads to the Underworld being paved with good intentions, and it takes a rare kind of strength to never set foot upon that path. I cannot say for certain it is a strength I possess. But let me assure you, decent people can sometimes make unfortunate decisions and still turn out to be decent people." He had noted over the past two days that the boy had the tendency to compare himself to others and always find himself coming up somehow short. Tolan wasn't blind, and he knew that some part of young Presto already looked up to him. The fact that the both of them might have reached the same, less-than-noble conclusion actually seemed to be a relief to the Magician. So, then, he had guessed correctly. "Or perhaps," Tolan mused, "I would have acted exactly as the both of you did, together. Venger needed to see the other side of the coin, to be the one in the position of complete helplessness when destruction is at hand. Immobilizing him as you did, and then freeing him as your friend did, was likely one of the greatest lessons you could have taught him. He has, for the first time, personally experienced true fear and true mercy at once, and some good may come of it yet."

Presto gaped. "Wow. That's ... I mean, I didn't expect someone like ... like you to say that."

"Oh?" Tolan asked with a smile. "The world is not quite so black-and-white as you would believe, and in life, we must all act in accordance with our own conscience. I consider myself a good person who is perfectly capable of turning into a complete bastard if circumstances warrant."

Bobby, who, with impeccable timing, chased after Uni right by Lord Tolan at that exact moment, shrieked with laughter. "He said bas-"

"BOBBY!" Diana shouted over the Barbarian's remark, which caused Sheila to stop short in alarm. "You watch your mouth, young man!"

"What?" Sheila demanded, quickly switching from alarm to fury and marching towards her brother like an oncoming thunderstorm. "What did you say, Bobby?"

"I didn't say nuthin', Sis!" the Barbarian began defensively as all eyes turned to him.

"You didn't say ANYTHING," Sheila immediately corrected, then, one second too late, realized the clever little trap she'd just walked into with both eyes wide open.

"If you say so! I didn't say anything!" Bobby grinned triumphantly, utterly failing to look the least bit innocent of the matter.

"Meyaaaah! Maaaneeeeiiing!" came a bleating echo.

Diana immediately leapt to Sheila's side of the argument, much to Bobby's dismay. "Don't you pull that wiseacre stuff with us, mister. You were going to say it, and that's bad enough! It's a good thing I stopped you!"

"Oh, yeah, I heard it too!" Eric chimed in, always ready and willing to help stir up some minor trouble for the twerp and his stupid Unicorn. "Started with a 'B'!"

"But-"

Lord Tolan rolled his eyes as the argument gained momentum, though he was mildly impressed that the group's walking pace never slowed even as the shouting began. Clearly they were quite practiced at it, as if getting a rise out of one another was something they did for fun. Bobby was firmly standing his verbal ground on the premise that he "didn't actually say it," while Sheila, Diana, and Eric dismissed that logic and were all noisily scolding at once. Hank was hanging a few steps back, smothering a grin and wisely staying out of it until such time as he was called upon to resolve the matter.

"This is gonna take a bit," Presto advised.

"Just so long as it does not delay us," Tolan answered. "We will do the people of Dastirum no favors by tarrying." He shook his head, now even more impressed, though this time in a rather nonplussed way. Eric had managed to turn completely around while still astride Hwesta, so that the Cavalier was facing *backwards* on the Elf-horse to better add his two coppers to the argument. "At least they seem to be enjoying themselves. In the mean time," he continued to Presto, "this mysterious dagger you say you took from the Dragon's Graveyard. May I see it?"

Presto did so, drawing it from its place on his belt and then flipping it around to hand it to the nobleman pommel-first. "I'm starting to think that maybe it isn't really even a Weapon of Power," he admitted. "It could be anything. Or, like, nothing. It could be just a plain old stupid knife that I grabbed like it was a big deal."

Drawing off a gauntlet, Tolan carefully tested the blade's edge with his bare thumb. "You are a Magician, a Wizard," he said, while turning the knife this way and that, studying the glow of the steel in the suns-light. Presto couldn't tell what the nobleman was looking for. "You, of all your friends, should be better attuned to magic than most. How does this knife feel to you?"

"I don't know," Presto answered uncertainly. "I mean, I've tried testing it, but I couldn't make it do anything ..."

"No, what I mean is," and here Tolan slapped the handle of the knife back into Presto's hand, "yes or no, does this knife *feel* magical to you?"

"Yes," Presto answered instantly, before he'd had a chance to second-guess himself. An expression of pure surprise popped onto his face a second later. "I ... I ... I mean ... well, yeah, I guess so, but I don't know what it does ..."

"I doubt even my friend Echlar could tell what a magical item's power is without further research," Tolan admitted. "But you can feel that it is indeed magical. Bear in mind, though, that not all powerful weapons are Weapons of Power. I'd wager that Tiamat collects many trophies, and like most dragons, she hoards them all together with little thought to organizing them by power or value. She might have been able to tell you what you have there. Dungeon Master certainly could. Venger, most likely so. As for me? The Elf in me feels there is magic in that blade as well, but more, I cannot say. I have not seen that particular knife before."

Sheila's frustrated voice rose over the continuing din of the argument just then. "Hank, will YOU tell him to watch his mouth?"

Presto and Tolan looked over their shoulders just in time to see Hank heave an impressively dramatic sigh, right on cue. Bobby immediately looked down, kicking at a rock with his toe as his cheeks reddened a bit. As a rebellious little brother, it was almost his duty to not listen to his big sister's scolding, and just about anything Eric tried to tell him bounced right off without a noticeable pause for effect. It was a little harder to ignore it when Diana lectured him, and when it came down to Hank getting on his case, Bobby knew he was in real trouble.

"Bobby," Hank began.

Bobby immediately jumped to his own defense. "I didn't say it! Mr. Tolan did!"

"Meeeeeyaaah! Meeeerrr Molaaaan!"

"He can say what he wants," Hank answered patiently. "He's older than any of us and he's a noble lord, too. I can't tell him to watch his language. But I can tell you. Watch your language."

"But I didn't really say it," Bobby mumbled. That line of defense was already running thin and he knew it, but he figured it couldn't hurt to try one more time.

"Okay, be honest, kiddo," Hank said in a way that seemed to make Bobby shrink several inches right in front of their eyes. "You were halfway there. If Diana hadn't stopped you in time, would you have gone ahead and said it?"

"Um. I mean, um." Though he looked around for help, at this point, the little Barbarian knew he'd lost. Even Uni's ears and tail drooped in sympathetic defeat. "Yeah, I guess."

"Don't."

And that was that. As quickly as it had begun, the argument was over. Bobby marched on in sullen silence, Eric righted himself and faced forward on the horse again, and Lord Tolan offered the group a halfway-apology for having inadvertently started the whole thing.

"One would think I should have learned to watch my own language by now," he said after scanning the lay of the land ahead of them. "Especially when little ears can hear. But fear not, I shall not be a corrupting influence on the children of your world much longer." He pointed down the slight decline in the road, to where it led to a heavily wooded valley about a mile or so ahead. "We will part ways soon. Behold, the Forest of Yar."

**ooo**

It had taken the small group a little less than half an hour to reach the fork in the road, during which time the kids had peppered Lord Tolan with any last-minute questions they had regarding Dastirum or the Duke of Darkness. At the crossroads, when it was at last time to part, Lord Tolan had pressed his remaining bags of traveler's rations into their hands and advised them to collect as much wild harvest along the way as they could. If the people of Dastirum were indeed "suffering and dying amidst squalor and decay" as Dungeon Master had said, with no apparent way of sending for help, the nobleman suspected that there would likely be a shortage of food and other supplies in the city. He had no fear of riding into the forest without rations of his own. At this point, Yarfell Proper was only a day and a half's ride away, and he knew how to live off the land for much longer than that. Besides, he was welcome amongst his Wood Elven cousins who lived in this forest, and he planned to spend the night as a guest in their treetop settlement.

"Do what you can for the people of Dastirum," had been Lord Tolan's parting words to them. "I will send aid from Yarfell Proper, which will arrive within the week. Farewell. If the gods are with you, you will have used the Duke's Sphere to return to your home by then, and we shall not see one another again."

Eric had reluctantly climbed off Hwesta's back, and as he patted the horse's muscular withers, she turned and affectionately nuzzled his hair into a complete mess. "Yeah, you too, you pretty girl," the Cavalier had answered, rubbing the horse's soft nose in an almost uncharacteristic display of gentle affection. "Thanks for the lift, sweetie. Now, you take good care of Lord Tolan in that forest, you hear me, girl?"

That had been about two hours ago. The first of the four suns was sinking into the horizon. A campsite had already been selected for the night. And they were still hearing "Eric's got a giiiiiiiiirlfriend" comments from Diana, Presto and Bobby.

Eric bore it with stoic dignity, refusing to rise to the bait or even point out that by the same logic, Uni was Bobby's "girlfriend." As he went about doing his share to set up camp for the evening, the only comment he made, head held high, was, "Hey, can I help it if chicks dig a guy in chain mail?" But mostly he let the teasing continue unabated. It hadn't escaped his notice that for the first time in almost a week, Presto was genuinely smiling.

Now that Eric knew what had been bothering Presto these few days, he felt like a complete lunk for not figuring it out sooner. The poor kid (Eric being two years older, of course,) had been running around thinking he was some horrible person for not wanting to let Venger go back in the Dragon's Graveyard? Sheesh. Okay, so maybe it had been a bad call at the time, but things had worked out in the end. As Eric had told Presto when he pulled him aside for a private chat a little bit ago, you just promise yourself not to make the same mistake again, and get on with life. "After all," he'd told the Magician, "if I smacked myself around for every bad decision I ever made the way you've been doing, then I probably would have beaten myself to death years ago."

Presto really hadn't thought of it that way.

Shortly after the group had found the campsite, Hank had disappeared quietly into the edge of the forest they'd been skirting. He'd reappeared just a few minutes ago, this time with the carcasses of three pheasant-like birds tied together with a thin rope and slung over his shoulder. Somehow, at the precise moment of his return, Sheila and Diana had managed to suddenly look much busier than everyone else, so the unpleasant task of plucking and gutting dinner fell to Eric and Presto.

"Stupid rule," an exasperated Eric said to Presto for about the tenth time as they labored over cleaning their dinner. What an evening this was turning out to be. First the girlfriend routine, then a heart-to-heart with Presto, now getting up close and personal with a pheasant's intestines. "Whoever kills it, somebody else cleans it. Ick. I think I've butchered a zillion ... _things_ for dinner since we got here, and it hasn't gotten any less icky."

Since all Eric had was a Shield, brightly-colored and noisy armor, and very little skill in the areas of hunting and tracking, he had always been singularly ill-equipped to bring down something for dinner. Though the rule meant that everyone ultimately did his or her fair share, consequently the Cavalier got the short and disgusting end of the stick more than most. Really, the rule wasn't even necessary any more. It had been much more important in their early days here in the Realm, invented within the first few weeks of their arrival in direct response to a spoiled rich boy who thought everyone should wait on him. Things were different now. They'd just never gotten around to changing the rule. Besides, they wouldn't dream of taking something away from Eric's vast repertoire of gripes.

"But there's a bright side," Presto answered with noticeably less disgust as he neatly sliced the bird open with his perpetually-sharp mystery dagger, using a relatively flat boulder for a work surface. Eric figured he must have been one of those geeks that actually _*_enjoyed_*_ dissecting the frog in Science class. "Did you know, that as a Wizard, I can read the future in these entrails?"

"Oh, really?" Eric asked, his words dripping with his trademark heavy sarcasm. Presto was still smiling and now making jokes, he'd noticed. It couldn't hurt to play along.

"Yeah," Presto agreed. Setting down his knife, he waved his hands extravagantly over the half-gutted bird. "Let me look into your future. I see ..." he said grandiosely, closing his eyes and letting his head fall back. "I see ... you will have ... chicken for dinner tonight."

"Wow. Brilliant," Eric deadpanned. "And hey, you know what? I can do it too. These in-trail thingies tell me that tomorrow morning we'll wake up, walk twenty miles, do some other stuff, and then go back to sleep. Call it a 'gut' feeling."

"Har de har har," Presto commented, a little miffed that his act had been stolen, until he noticed how neatly Eric had dressed the pheasant he'd been working on while they'd been talking. "Hey! I found that knife! You used it without my permission!"

"Nah, I wouldn't dream of touching it," Eric answered absently, poking a finger distastefully at the pheasant's innards until he found a particularly squishy and disgusting bit. He placed it on the edge of the boulder while concentrating on something across the campsite. "It's your knife, you're the one who stole it from Tiamat, after all."

"Eric, what are you doing with that liver - "

"Okay, watch this!" Presto could see right where this was going, but didn't have time to react before Eric lined up, aimed, and gave a good, hard flick of his finger.

Eric was probably one of the boys in Science class who hated dissecting the frog, but enjoyed tossing the guts at the girls to gross them out. The flying bit of liver splatted squarely on Sheila's cheek, and she immediately let out a godawful shriek, frantically slapping the wet and sticky blob away in disgust.

"Oh, crap," Eric gasped as both Hank and Bobby rounded on him, looking furious. "I was aiming for Diana!"

"Um, he did it!" Presto exclaimed, pointing at the Cavalier while skittering several safe steps away.

"Hey, uh, guys, can we talk?" Eric asked nervously as Hank and Bobby both closed in on him. Distinct memories of the chain-mail wedgie he'd gotten the last time these two ganged up on him made him back away at a matching pace. "I mean ... You wouldn't hurt your ol' pal Eric, would ya?" He held up his hands innocently and grinned with an amazing amount of cheese. "I ... I ... I mean, I'M TOO GOOD-LOOKING TO DIE!" he suddenly shouted, turning and bolting for the trees, with one irate Ranger and one equally wrathful little Barbarian hot on his heels.

All in all, it was an ordinary evening.

**ooo**

Lord Tolan's estimation of the distance to Dastirum had been correct. Afternoon was well-established on the second day that the gang had been walking. The rolling hills and wooded coppices of the days before had slowly become miles of verdant, level grasses, which Dungeon Master had informed them were named the Uaine Flatlands. What seemed to be a walled city stood in the distance, and as they walked ever closer to this knot of civilization, the wild plains gave way to cultivated farmlands.

Since parting ways with their temporary guide at the Forest of Yar, the kids had been traveling with a certain sense of unease. This was all going too easily. They'd grown too used to Venger or his minions harassing their every step, but now they had not seen him, or even so much as a single Orc or Lizard-man, in over a week. At this point, the anticipation was nearly unbearable. Several times, nearly out of their minds with paranoia, they had to actively remind one another that Dungeon Master had quite clearly said that Venger was lying low and unlikely to cause them any trouble so soon after what had happened in the Dragon's Graveyard. Hard as it was to believe, it was true. Other than a few minor encounters with normal roaming animals, they traveled safe and unhindered. No one had been dogging their steps in over a week.

No one solid or easily visible in all the shadows of the forest, anyway.

By that second day, the general expectation of an attack that never came faded and was replaced by a more immediate anxiety about their surroundings. Something was very wrong with the plowed acreage they were now passing through as they approached the city. They'd noticed it at the first field they'd encountered, saw it again when they'd reached the second farmstead, and realized it was a pattern by the time they'd come across the third. That there were no farmhouses or signs of dwellings came as no surprise. Often, for safety in this world, farmers kept their homes within the protective walls of their city and traveled out to work their fields from there. What bothered them was that obviously, no one had been working these fields all season.

"It's like everyone just stopped farming all at once," Sheila commented as they passed yet another abandoned field. Like most of the others, it had been planted that season, probably in early spring, but seemingly no one had tended the crops since then. Weeds grew wild between crowded and underwatered plants that desperately needed thinning and pest control, and with apparently no one picking them, perfectly edible crops were falling off the vine and rotting where they landed. Peas and other early-season vegetables, which matured and should have been harvested months ago, lay dry and brown in withered rows. Here and there, wild hares and small animals that looked like prairie dogs bounded freely through the rows, eating the choice bits with impunity since there were no farmers to chase them away.

Amongst the acres of abandoned crops, a few of the fields had unquestionably been burned. None of the kids was sure if this was the a farming technique, the result of wildfires, or something else entirely.

"Maybe they all left?" Bobby suggested as he watched Uni pause to munch on something that very much resembled a tomato, except for its bright amethyst hue. She swallowed it, seemed to consider the taste for a moment, then turned to look at Bobby with what could only be described as a four-legged shrug. It was the fourth or fifth vegetable she'd taste-tested. There had been nothing wrong with any of them.

"Maybe they're all dead?" Presto countered, then, with a shudder, immediately wished he hadn't. About two miles back, they had discovered some sort of old outbuilding, perhaps a large toolshed or cart house near the edge of one of the fields. It was in good condition, and it was fairly clear that the shed had been used as recently as this season. But none of them worked up the nerve to open the doors and see what was inside. Lord Tolan's description of the curses' victims he had discovered, trapped in some sort of endless, undead madness, had been far too vivid for comfort. And they had never forgotten their own too-close encounters with zombies in abandoned shacks. They had given it a wide berth as they passed quietly by.

"No, I don't think so," Hank replied to both of them, gesturing for the group to stop and take stock of the situation. "Dungeon Master pretty much told us that there were people - living people - who need help. They're here, somewhere. Probably in the city," he reasoned, while pointing to the high wooden walls that now stood maybe only a mile away.

"But why would they let all this food go to waste?" Diana wondered. "Did you guys see that Uni's been eating some of it? So have those rabbits and things. It's safe. I don't see anything that would have stopped anybody from picking it." To prove it, she reached down, grabbed a leafy green top, and with a quick tug, pulled up a cultivated version of one of the wild root vegetables they'd so often survived on in the woods. She looked curiously at the root, saw nothing that looked like a trap or a curse, and then shrugged at her friends. A few moments passed in expectant silence, but Diana was right. Nothing exploded, attacked, fell from the sky, or swallowed them whole for daring to pick a carrot. "See?" She gestured in bewilderment to the literal tons of fresh vegetables surrounding them. "Nothing cursed here. I don't get it."

"It doesn't make a lot of sense," Hank agreed, shading the suns from his eyes with his hand and studying all that he could see of the town in the distance. "You know, if that's Dastirum, I can't even call that an actual city, it looks more like a mid-sized town. But still, a place like that would need this kind of food supply. Probably more than a thousand people could live there, easy." He pondered the mystery for a few more seconds, then asked, "Presto? Any chance you can whip us up a few sacks?"

"Um ... sacks?" Presto asked, dutifully reaching for his Hat even if he wasn't sure what he was supposed to be doing with it. "You know my Hat hasn't been working too well since, um, since we, uh, the Dragon's Graveyard and all ... you mean like grocery sacks?"

"Kind of. More like big burlap sacks," Hank replied. Eric and Diana easily followed his train of thought, and bent down to start gathering the best of the vegetables before he'd even finished speaking. "The kind we can put produce in. If these people are short on food, I'm thinking we should gather up more to take with us than just the nuts and stuff we picked on the way here."

"Oh! Okay! Got it, sacks," Presto nodded vigorously, licking his lips and concentrating on making up some sort of incantation over his Hat. He did not notice, or at least pretended to not notice, how just about everyone, including Uni, took a precautionary step or two away.

He got burlap sacks on the fifth try. On his very first attempt, that Hat just seemed to cough once, and nothing came out. He concentrated harder, and his next try left him with very red cheeks when out of his Hat came a sexy little black satin dress. It seemed like a bit of a non-sequitur, at least until Sheila noticed the label said _Saks Fifth Avenue_. Unfortunately the label also said "Size Zero," which made it too small for either of the girls, so back into the Hat it went (much to Sheila's disappointment ... she'd noticed the way Hank eyed the dress when she'd held it up to herself). His third effort, after a very long time of worriedly rummaging around in the Hat and finding nothing, eventually produced an album of saxophone music.

"Kenny G: _G Force_," he read off the little plastic case, before shrugging and tossing it back into the Hat without another word.

The Hat balked again, producing nothing when asked, and Presto shook it a few times in frustration. For some reason, it seemed like its batteries had been losing their charge since the Dragon's Graveyard. Maybe he'd overtaxed it or something in that final fight with Venger. Nobody else's Weapon was dying at the same time, so that ruled out the notion that maybe it was time for another trip to the Hall of Bones for a recharge. It was just the Hat that had the problem. Or else it was him.

Eventually, the Hat sputtered and came to life once more. After cycling through Saks and sax, it finally figured out that Presto really just wanted sacks, and gave him what he'd been asking for all along. They then spent about half an hour picking and bagging as many vegetables as they could reasonably carry. Even Uni wound up with two small bags of potatoes draped over her front shoulders.

Loaded down like this, it took another three-quarters of an hour of walking before the group stood, silent and uneasy, contemplating the gates of Dastirum.

"This looks awful," Sheila finally said for all of them. Noxious-looking vines had slithered several feet up the cracked masonry on either side of the tall, wooden gates, which hung slightly open. Weeds sprung up between the stones of the cobbled road that led into the town, which bore other signs of disuse and disrepair.

It was not the abundance of weeds that disturbed Sheila and the others. There was something else, something intangible. A mournful, foreboding silence surrounded what should have been a bustling town. A palpable feeling of hopelessness and despair loomed over the city, and the more definite scent of something rotting wafted towards them on the late summer breeze.

"Eew. Okay, that's a bad sign," Hank said when they had uneasily taken in the sights and scents of decay before them. Setting down the bag of vegetables he carried, he gathered them all into a circle and looked at each of them squarely. "All right. Something bad has definitely happened here. I don't know what kind of curse was placed on this city, but Dungeon Master seemed to think that coming here was ultimately a good idea. Question is, does it seem like a good idea to everyone else?" He studied the various expressions on his companions' faces. They had been a cohesive unit so long, so dependent on each other for their very survival, that each person's thoughts had become an intricate gear in the complex group mind. Their looks could tell him exactly what everyone was thinking without anyone saying a word. Still, he preferred to act with everyone's clear input. "Guys? What do you think?"

Bobby spoke first, with confidence, proving his bravery to himself and everyone else as always. "Aw, that's not so creepy! I'm not afraid of some dumb curse!" Despite having spent over a year in this world, it still seemed that he didn't always grasp how dangerous a place it could be. And whether it was that Uni also did not comprehend that there might be danger, or that she just wanted to show support for whatever Bobby decided, she held her head high and bleated an echo of his statement.

Diana's eyes held a characteristic look of quiet determination, though it was not immediately obvious whether she was more determined to help the people of Dastirum, or to get the mystic Sphere from the Duke of Darkness. "We can do it, no sweat."

"We've got to help these poor people somehow," Sheila added, far more clear on the matter than Diana, even if it was obvious that the rotting smell of the city disturbed her. A part of her was wishing for a different solution, but the stubborn look in her eyes showed that there was no way she was about to let Bobby or Hank or any of them face this curse without her.

As usual, Presto looked a bit uncertain, but at the same time, it was an endearing quality of his that made him always eager to prove his worth. The other predictable thing about Presto was that he usually went along with the group consensus, no matter how nervous it made him personally. "O ... okay," he finally agreed. "I mean, um, let's go for it!"

Eric's face, on the other hand, was full of that familiar, confused dilemma. He never had any particular desire to go looking for trouble, as it had an uncanny knack for finding them. Over the last few days, he'd had plenty of time to really think about what they were doing. Yes, he realized they had to get the Duke of Darkness to come here in order to get his mystic Sphere if they wanted to go home. Yes, they'd help the people of Dastirum while they were at it. But Eric always tried to be realistic about these things. "Okay, just want to make sure here," he reiterated. "We're walking into a cursed city, when we don't even know what kind of a curse we're up against, then we're deliberately ticking off the guy who placed the curse just to get his attention, and we're actually hoping that he comes after us, right?"

"Pretty much," Diana agreed.

"You guys are nuts," Eric informed them bluntly.

"Duly noted," Hank replied without even blinking. "But that's not the question. Are you coming with us, or would you rather stay out here and act as our lookout?"

"And leave you guys to fend for yourselves without me?" Eric gave an almost-convincing laugh. "Are you kidding? Wouldn't miss it for the world."

"Hey... y'know what?" Bobby interrupted. His attention had long since wandered to the half-open gates, and he had moved a little closer to stare inside, with Uni close by. He waved the others over and pointed inside the town walls. "I just saw somebody walking down, like, a street or an alley or whatever."

"A person?" Sheila asked her little brother as the others ventured closer to the gates. "Not a ... a zombie or something?"

"Don't think so. See?" Bobby pointed again. A figure, which despite its nondescript clothes, struck the kids as male, had just walked out of a building about a hundred yards away. Though he seemed to be carrying the weight of the world on his shoulders, the man had the steady, balanced gait of a Human, not the lurching, uneven shuffle of the undead, or even the lumbering stalk of an Orc. Whoever he was, he was walking away, his back to the gates, and he did not notice the small group watching him.

"People," Diana mused, stepping back a bit and resting her chin on her knuckles thoughtfully. She wasn't sure what she'd been expecting, but this wasn't exactly it. "Living people, not zombies. You think Lord Tolan was wrong?"

"Well, he did say that every place they found that the Duke had cursed was a little different," Presto told her. "And all that was, what did he say, eight, nine years ago, I think? Maybe the Duke is on to something new by now?"

"Whatever's different about this one, we're not going to find out by standing around out here," Hank finally said, hefting his sack of vegetables and motioning everyone along with a gesture. "Come on. Either we do this, or we turn around and leave."

"Right, we can't leave now that we've come this far," Sheila answered. "And remember, there's supposed to be more help coming from Yarfell Proper in less than a week," she continued, reassuring herself as well as everyone else in the face of the creepy feeling the town exuded. At least there was a backup plan.

With breaths held and showing more bravado than they felt, six kids and a baby Unicorn strode purposefully though the weathered gates into the town of Dastirum.

They paused. They waited. They looked around. Then, slowly, six breaths were let out in relief. So far, so good. As they had discovered in the field, nothing exploded, attacked, fell from the sky, or swallowed them whole for daring to enter a supposedly cursed town.

Something just didn't feel right. Yet nothing seemed to be wrong, exactly. "Well," Eric commented after a moment of taking in the sight of the town and accepting that despite all the dire warnings, nothing out of the ordinary was happening. "This isn't so ba-"

"NO! NO! You FOOLS!" someone shouted, making everyone jump, drop their bags of produce, and ready their Weapons in an instant. A man was running towards them, frantically waving his arms. They couldn't tell if it was the same man they had seen earlier or not, but he seemed horrified by their sudden presence in their town. "What do you think you're doing?"

"We..." Hank lowered his Bow and took a tentative step forward from the group, only marginally better at hiding the sudden alarm on his face than the others. "Is this Dastirum?" he asked the man, not sounding quite as calm as he'd hoped. "We were told to come here, that you guys needed help ..."

"Help?" the man threw up his hands, then seemed to collapse a little bit, staring down at the ground in defeat and shaking his head. Whatever rush of emotion had been animating him was gone now. "You coulda helped if you stayed out there," he sighed, limply gesturing behind the kids, towards the gate. "But now that you're inside, you can't ever pass beyond the walls unless you want this entire town and everyone in it to die on its own funeral pyre."


	4. The Duke's Curse

**Dastirum**

Chapter 4: The Duke's Curse

**ooo**

"We ... what?" Hank asked slowly.

Just inside the gates of Dastrium, the gang stood in a rough semicircle, staring at the man who had tried too late to stop them from entering. The stranger stared gloomily at his feet, shaking his head slowly. He had the worn, tired appearance of someone teetering on the bitter edge of despair combined with the lean, pinched look of someone close to starvation. "You can't ever leave," he said again. "And now you're just a bunch more mouths to feed what are gonna die here like the rest of us."

"Wait, back up," Hank said, holding his hands up in obvious confusion. A spike of fear lanced through him at the news, and he quickly swallowed it down, then glanced at his friends behind him to make sure no one was showing any visible signs of panic at the man's words. "What do you mean, we can't ever leave? What's going to happen if we do?"

"This town is cursed!" the stranger answered with exhausted fatalism. "The Duke o' Darkness, he trapped us here, what, five, six months ago now? We can't leave. We can't go through the gates. We can't go past the walls at all, not even one person, without bringing the curse down on us. Didn't you know? We'll all burn to death in the fire from the sky, or be crushed or swallowed up when the ground opens up beneath us. So we're trapped in here and now our supplies are out and we're all gonna starve to death. Either way, we all die." The bitter frustration had risen in his voice at each word, but at the end, he shrugged listlessly, somehow beyond the point of caring any more. "Whoever told you to come here and 'help,' didn't they tell you none of that?"

"We heard there was a curse," Hank answered, trying to remain calm as much as for the stranger's sake as his own. The situation couldn't be as bad as the man was portraying, could it? "Dunge ... I mean, the person who told us to come here seemed to think there was something we could do about it."

Diana stepped forward then, doing her best to present a calm front in tandem with Hank. Any alarm she felt at the concept of being trapped, she pushed into the farthest corner of her brain until she had more information on exactly what was trapping them. "Sir, we're really serious about helping. We just ... need to figure out what to do first. Can I ask, what's your name?"

The stranger stared suspiciously at Diana for a moment, clearly debating whether or not to answer. Eventually, he relented. "Well," he sighed, "you don't look like no evil wizards to me. But even if you are, I guess it don't matter too much any more if you use my Name to conjure against me or not. I'm Jakarth."

At the back of the group, Eric glanced at Presto in confusion. "Use his name to conjure against him?" he whispered.

Presto silenced him with a gesture. "Magic stuff. Tell you later," he whispered back.

"Jakarth, okay," Hank nodded, unsure whether he should offer to shake hands with the man, who made no move to extend the formality of his own accord. "My name's Hank. This is Diana, and this is Sheila, her brother Bobby, and back there is Eric and Presto. We're all ... um ... sir?"

Jakarth was not paying attention. Instead, having caught sight of Uni, he stared at her with such an intense, hungry gleam that the little Unicorn backed up several steps to huddle nervously behind Bobby's legs. The Barbarian saw this, and even if he wasn't sure what the man wanted, he snarled and hefted his Club in warning.

"You brought that for eating, right?" Jakarth asked. He was, clearly and absolutely, not joking.

"WHAT?" Sheila gasped in horror, covering her mouth with her hands, but then quickly changing her mind and lunging to grab Bobby's shoulders when he shouted and launched himself furiously at Jakarth.

"Absolutely not!" Diana shouted firmly at the same time.

"Well ..." Eric began. Presto promptly kicked him in the shin.

"No, she is NOT to eat," Hank reiterated, stepping into Jakarth's line of sight to drive the point home. "She's one of us, and you're going to have to leave her alone if you want us to help."

Jakarth's gaze lingered on Uni anyway. "There's nine hundred people living in this town right now," he informed the gang. "We ain't had fresh meat in months. Or even dried meat. Or much of nothing else. Our food stores is gone. You gonna try telling nine hundred hungry people that an animal you brought in here ain't for eating just because you say you're here to help, when you don't even know what's going on? Trust me, they ain't gonna believe you."

"Then we need time to prove it. Will this buy us some?" Reaching down, Hank opened one of the burlap sacks they had carried in, revealing a heavy stash of fat, gourd-like vegetables

"Those ..." Jakarth's attitude changed in an blink. Forgetting Uni for the moment, he essentially threw himself on the mound of squash with a cry. "Thank the gods!" he shouted, gathering up as many vegetables as his arms could carry. "How much did you bring?"

Diana looked a little disconcerted by such an disproportionately joyous reaction over an unremarkable sack of squash, as if it demonstrated, more certainly than any of Jakarth's words, that they'd really walked into something as bad as it sounded. Still, she answered him steadily, "As much as we could carry."

"MORE than we could carry," Eric muttered, his back still a little sore from lugging the sack all this way. Presto looked about ready to kick him in the shin again, and that was the only thing that stopped Eric from making another sarcastic comment. He glowered at Presto in return, displeased at having been silenced. Right now, sarcasm was his only defense against pondering the dreadful question of what, exactly, they'd gotten themselves into.

"It's not enough to feed nine hundred people," Hank admitted as he looked around hurriedly. Jakarth's outburst had attracted attention. The first happy noise these people had heard in months brought curious onlookers, who dropped whatever they were doing and came running when they saw the sacks full of food. Each and every one of them had the same beaten, tattered look of despair mingling with pure desperation at the sight of fresh food. "But we're willing to share," Hank added quickly, before the townsfolk covered too much of the distance towards them. "All we're asking in return is for somebody to tell us what's going on here. And, if you've got it, a safe place to stay where we can keep our Unicorn out of sight so nobody eats her. Sheila!" Hank turned sharply to her when the hungry mob got close enough to be a real concern. "Cover Uni!"

Sheila did just that, scooping up the cowering little Unicorn before too many people saw her, then pulling up the Cloak's hood so that the both of them disappeared.

Jakarth was the only one who even noticed this. His fellow Dastirites were too focused on the bags of vegetables to pay attention to anything else. "That ... she ..." Jakarth began, eyes wide.

"Sir, _*_please!*" Hank interrupted as they were jostled this way and that by more and more hungry townsfolk frantically pushing their way towards the food. "Did you see those sacks our Unicorn was carrying? They're full of sweet potatoes, and they're all for you if you can find us some place safe and tell us what you know about the curse on this town!" He asked this urgently but as quietly as possible, hoping that in the chaos, no one else would hear the comment and then demand they hand over the potatoes and, quite possibly, Uni.

"Sweet potatoes?" Jakarth asked suspiciously. He'd seen the bags in question, but not what was inside them. For all he knew, these kids could be lying and the bags were stuffed with straw or leaves. Maybe it was better to stay here and fight for the vegetables that he knew were real ... but then again, if the sweet potatoes in those sacks were real too, they were all his for the asking, and he wouldn't even have to fight for them. For someone as hungry as a Dastirite, it was an agonizing decision. "You're not trying to trick me?"

"Oh, come on!" This was said by Eric, who had been roughly shoved out of someone's way with nearly every step he took. He was getting frustrated and a little scared by the whole situation. It wasn't easy to stay on his feet, even on the outside edge of the hungry mob. "We don't have any reason to trick you!"

"He's right," Diana agreed, catching Eric's arm to steady him when he tripped over someone who was scurrying after an escaped melon. "We're not lying. Can't you help us?"

It took a moment of consideration, but Jakarth finally agreed. These strangers really didn't have a reason to lie, he decided, and they never had to bring or share any of the food in the first place. Maybe they really were honest, and maybe they really were trying to help. Plus, those sweet potatoes would feed his family for days. "All right, follow me," he said, turning towards the main street of the town. More people were running down this street towards them, in hopes of being in time to grab some of the fresh food. News traveled quickly, it seemed. "There's some empty houses. You can have your pick. The owners all died, so they ain't gonna care no more."

**ooo**

The house itself wasn't much. There wasn't much inside it, either. According to Jakarth, the owner had passed away from some disease that would have easily been cured if only a healer could have gone to fetch the proper medicines. Within a day of the owner's death, everything of any use had been stripped and looted. Food, clothing, blankets, anything of real importance to survival had all disappeared. Furniture had also been taken, probably to replace or repair worn or broken items in other peoples' homes, or else chopped into firewood which was also in short supply. On the other hand, most of the cookware was left in the kitchen. Nobody had any reason to take it because there was no food left in this town to cook.

Oddly enough, there were no items of wealth or value left in the home, either. Anywhere else, that might have made sense. Looters would take anything they could grab and sell it later. But in a place where there was no food, no supplies, and no chance of buying either, there was no point to currency any more. A gold coin or a silver candlestick wouldn't keep a person warm or fill an empty stomach.

This house was not the one the kids had chosen in front of Jakarth. He had offered them their pick of four, fairly close together on the same street. Hank had selected the one on the end of the street nearest to the center of the shabby town, and they all went inside to share the last of Lord Tolan's waybread and hear Jakarth's version of the events before and after Dastirum was cursed by the Duke of Darkness. When he was finished, they thanked him, gave him the bags of sweet potatoes as promised, waited five minutes after he left, then picked themselves up and moved into the empty house at the furthest opposite end of the street.

It's not that they felt that Jakarth was inherently untrustworthy. They just knew, beyond all doubt, that the people trapped in this town were starving. If word got around that the strange kids who had walked through the gates had come with a perfectly edible live animal, hunger might drive these people to come calling with their butcher's knives. At least this way, any mob would be slightly misinformed and go to the wrong house first. It would buy a few minutes to hustle Uni and themselves into this house's empty root cellar and pray they weren't discovered.

For the moment, Presto was keeping watch out the broken window, while the others sat on the floor digesting everything that Jakarth had told them. The situation looked bleak.

The first few sentences Jakarth spoke of Dastirum's curse echoed Lord Tolan's story of the Duke's bid for Yarfell Proper. Just before dawn one morning in early spring, an evil-looking figure wearing black, spiked armor suddenly appeared atop the city walls. His shouts and threats were so loud, they woke the entire town, and his demand was simple. If the people of Dastirum did not surrender within the hour, he would lay a curse on the city walls that would bring down their doom.

Unlike Yarfell Proper, Dastirum did not have a crotchety old Court Wizard to blast the Duke of Darkness right off the wall, but the Dastirites had laughed anyway. What threat was this man? He had brought no army, no show of military force ready to batter down the gates. He was just one man shouting grandiosely about doom and destruction with nothing to back himself. He had disappeared after informing them he would return in one hour to accept their surrender.

An hour passed in which the annoyed yet amused citizens of Dastirum readied their weapons to teach this mysterious Duke of Darkness a thing or two when he returned. One man, standing alone and unprotected atop their city walls? What an excellent target he would present. The Dark Lord Venger himself had painfully learned not to show his face anywhere in the Kingdom of Yarfell since their young Queen had taken the throne. Who was this Duke of Darkness to think he would fare any better?

Fifty-five minutes had passed. Archers were taking their positions in front of a large audience, expecting their would-be attacker's return and betting on who would make the best shot of the morning. Unexpectedly, they felt the ground beneath their feet tremble. Then shake. Then lurch wildly. People were thrown to the ground amidst screams of panic and pain. A horrible rumbling, followed by the ear-splitting rending of masonry and wood, announced that an entire section of the town, people and all, had been swallowed when a fissure split the ground beneath.

There was no time to recover before a roaring from above brought more screams of terror. Giant balls of yellow fire, streaming greasy smoke, streaked from the sky towards Dastirum. Several buildings instantly exploded in flames, including the town's small Temple of the Stars. More fireballs hit outside the city, igniting the fields and incinerating many of their just-planted crops.

It was over within minutes. The quaking abated, then the fire stopped falling from the sky, though several buildings in the town still burned. And there on the walls of the town stood the Duke of Darkness. Jakarth tried to quote the Duke of Darkness as best he could, but his memory was clouded by the haze of panic that gripped the crowd.

"I see you have no intention of surrender," his booming, ugly voice had hissed, or so Jakarth remembered. "So be it. My curse is now upon you. What you have just seen is only a taste of what is to come should anyone ever try to leave this town. No one, no living thing larger than an insect may ever pass beyond these walls. To do so will bring back the fire from the sky, and the ground will open up and swallow you and everyone you have ever loved! Stay here and rot in your own desolation, or destroy yourselves by trying to leave it. I will accept your surrender when you have learned to never cross the Duke of Darkness!"

"What kind of curse?" Presto had interrupted then, knowing they'd have to figure out what they were up against before they had even the slightest chance of breaking it. "I mean, how did he place it? I mean, I mean, like, did you see what he actually did, or used, to cause the curse?"

No, Jakarth had explained, he could not help there. He himself had not had a very good view of whatever the Duke of Darkness had done, nor had his friends who had stood with him that day. So they, like many others in their fear and fury, refused to believe the Duke's words. Shouts were raised and arrows flew. The Duke seemed ready for this, holding aloft some sort of pulsating ball and mysteriously vanishing from sight before the first arrow could find its mark. Even as he did so, the quaking began again. This time, a close-by building collapsed, sending terror spreading rapidly through the screaming crowd. People ran. In their fear of being crushed, some bolted towards the city's gates, flinging them open to reach the fields beyond.

They never lived to make another mistake.

Fire rained down on the escapees the moment they crossed the threshold of the town, consuming their bodies before they even had time to scream. In a matter of seconds, seven residents of Dastirum were nothing more than piles of fine charcoal. But even at that, Jakarth had explained, the Dastirites refused to accept they had fallen victim to a curse.

It was in the weeks after that the truth became evident. In that time, they had witnessed twelve more people walk or run through the gates. Now, those twelve people were nothing more than blackened ash blown away by the prairie winds. Violent lurches in the ground, rumbling at the same moment each person had stepped outside, had destroyed two of the town's wells and buried the slaughterhouse, the gristmill, and eight homes, including the families within.

Days later, a group of six people, deciding that the curse had been laid across the gates like a tripwire, had the inspiration to climb over the walls instead. They made it triumphantly to the top of the 20-foot walls on rickety, homemade ladders. Then, in seconds, cheers from the onlookers turned to cries of horror when charred bits of bone sprinkled down from the top of the wall where the people had stood only seconds before. Dastirum lost its weaving guild and three more homes in the resultant quake.

Four more people, who thought that the Duke's curse was upon the town's walls themselves, thought of tunneling under rather than trying to cross them. Their digging began near a shed as far away from the gates as possible. With a day's labor, they had made quick progress, and were about to break through to freedom. There was no fire from the sky, but all four of them had been in their little tunnel when the quake had hit almost directly beneath them. Their friends and families had not been able to dig them out in time.

Late one night, the town had been jolted awake by a brilliant flash and a loud rending of the ground which swallowed much of the merchant district. At first, the frightened people had no idea what had happened. The pieces were eventually put together in the next day or two. Despite warnings from their elders and the evidence before their own eyes, there had been a group of teenagers who had decided they'd be able to safely sneak out of town after darkfall, when the curse "couldn't see them." Those teenagers had never been seen since that night.

The curse did not limit itself to just the human population of Dastirum, either. As the Duke had said, no living thing larger than an insect could pass beyond these walls. This was proven true when a hunting dog had glanced through the open gates and spotted something roaming in one of the fields beyond. Unheeding of its master's commands to stop, the dog had charged after the game, baying in challenge. What looked like a fork of lightning utterly destroyed all traces of the animal before its hind legs had completely passed beyond the gates.

Having lost four more homes and the families living there in the subsequent quake when the dog bolted, the Dastirites had taken a desperate step. Their gates hung open, flung outward from the first failed bid for freedom, and could not be closed. To attempt it would mean stepping even a few feet beyond the walls, and no one would take the risk. Now, knowing there would be more destruction if any of the roaming cats, dogs, chickens, goats, and horses within the town happened to wander through those gates, the sad choice was made. Every pet, every stray, every farm animal in the town, was slaughtered. It was the last fresh meat that most of them had eaten.

Cut off from the rest of the world, under siege yet with no army surrounding them, Dastirum tried to conserve its few stores and limited resources as much as possible. But five or six months -- Jakarth had lost track by now -- had stretched their supplies to the end. Backyard gardens within the town could only produce so much, certainly not enough to sustain the nine hundred remaining people. Since most of the spring planting had already been done in the fields beyond the walls, there had been few seeds left and not much space to cultivate, even though sections of the town's cobblestoned streets had been ripped up to expose more soil to till. Worse, the town's gardens were not faring well. Their young seedlings had started strong, but many never reached their productive vigor. Some simply withered an died. Others did not bear nearly so much fruit as the farmers expected, which Jakarth ultimately ascribed to the soil inside the town walls having never been fertilized, composted, or otherwise prepared for large-scale gardening.

"But what about people outside the town?" Diana had asked. Not every single citizen of Dastirum had been behind the walls when the Duke cursed them, surely. Hadn't anyone been able to help?

It was true, Jakarth admitted. There were a few people out working the crops even before dawn that day. What happened to them was, in the end, a mystery, but Jakarth was fairly certain most had perished in the first fireballs that rained down on the fields.

Even at that, a few friends and relatives on the outside had survived. At first they had tried to help in any way they could. Some of them threw food and supplies in through the open gates. Others drove livestock in for the townsfolk to slaughter and eat, for the curse was not invoked by anything going *into* the town. Still others on the outside promised they would bring word to Yarfell Proper, seeking aid.

The steady stream of supplies lasted about two weeks. After that, those helpful friends and relatives just mysteriously disappeared. And the hoped-for aid from Yarfell Proper never came.

"We have it on pretty good authority that your friends never made it to Yarfell Proper in the first place," Hank had explained as gently as he could in the face of Jakarth's resigned expression. "They never got the message. But we know someone who's taking the news to them now. Last we saw him, it was two days ago at the edge of the Forest of Yar, so he's probably there already."

Jakarth was just a little too far beyond the ability to hope. "That's figuring the curse won't get him, too. It got everyone else."

The kids had their doubts about a curse affecting someone who hadn't come within thirty miles of its center, but Jakarth was utterly convinced of its long reach. Not wanting to argue the point with no evidence in either direction, and in fact not really wanting to consider the possibility of harm coming to their newfound friend from Yarfell Proper, they just let the topic go. Jakarth had little to add beyond that, other than a few stories of people here and there reaching the point of desperation in the following months. Even in the face of the curse, some had tried to leave. None of them ever made it more than a few steps beyond the gates.

Soon enough, with little else to add, Jakarth finally departed with a belly full of waybread and carrying two sacks of sweet potatoes. After that, the silence in the little house was ominous.

"Okay," Eric finally spoke, several minutes after they had all retreated into their own dark thoughts. "Raise your hand if you thought this was a bad idea to begin with."

"Don't start, Eric," Hank sighed before the Cavalier could lift his own hand even halfway into the air. "You had your chance to back out at the gates. Second-guessing won't help now. So let's just look at where we are right now and go from there, all right?"

"I'm just saying --"

"Just saying what?" Rising from his seat on the floor next to Sheila, Hank began to pace in mild agitation. "That we're trapped in this town like it's a prison camp? That it'll get us all killed if we make an escape attempt? I think we all know that. And yes, it really does look like coming here was a bad idea." Here he paused, spreading his hands in an open admission that he was confused. "Except for the fact that Dungeon Master seemed to think just the opposite. And let's face it. As irritating as some of us find Dungeon Master, has he ever really led us into something we couldn't handle in the end?"

Glancing away, Eric just twitched one shoulder in a silent, halfhearted shrug, refusing to enter that debate. It didn't matter if this was another one of Dungeon Master's hare-brained hero quests or not. Right now they were curse-trapped in a desperate situation and Eric felt he had every right to be upset about it.

"Guys, look," Diana said when Eric made no effort to answer the question. "Can I remind everyone that we haven't even tried to break the curse yet? We don't even know if it's breakable or not, so maybe we ought to save the doom-and-gloom until after we give it a shot, okay?

"Yeah, you're right," Hank agreed absently as Eric huffed out some sound of acquiescence. The Ranger almost began his pacing again, then decided not to waste the effort and sat back down with a calming breath. "Okay, I'm open to suggestions. Anything at all. Presto? Any ideas?"

Not looking away from his post at the window, the Magician gave a small shake of his head. He absently gouged an abstract design into the weathered sill with the point of his dagger and shrugged faintly. "Um. Not really. Not yet, anyway. I mean, I can kind of picture it," he said, pointing the dagger out the broken window at nothing in particular, then sweeping it in a wide circle. "I don't know for sure what kind of curse it is, but it's around the whole town like a big sphere, you know? Because if they can't go high enough to go over it, and they can't dig deep enough to get under it, then it must have the town completely closed in. Like we're in a bubble." Sighing, he raised his hands in a gesture of futility before letting them drop in his lap. "But I don't know how to pop it. Breaking a curse, well, okay, I've done it before but it really isn't my specialty, you know? Maybe ... if we knew how the curse was placed in the first place, we could undo it somehow. You know, like if that Duke guy buried some badoolah-wunga idol somewhere in the town, we could dig it up and smash it, or if he marked the town's walls with ... like, um ... chicken blood or something, we could, I dunno, wash it off or erase it or something. Problem is, it doesn't sound like anyone knows how he placed it at all."

"Somebody's got to know," Diana said with more conviction than anyone else felt at the moment. Rising, she crossed the room and joined Presto at the window, looking towards the part of town where Jakarth had indicated the whole thing had occurred. "They could have had a couple hundred people standing there," she estimated. "And there's not much that would have blocked their view of someone standing on top of the walls. Maybe Jakarth and his friends didn't see what the Duke did, but with that many people, somebody had to have seen something."

"Do you think they'll even talk to us?" Sheila asked. She was leaning slightly against Hank's shoulder, her face pensive. "I mean, Jakarth kind of hinted that most of the people here really wouldn't trust us, and might even resent us because we're just a drain on their food supply, when we didn't even have to come here in the first place."

"Actually, I ... I don't think they have any reason not to talk to us," Presto said, glancing away from the window for a moment. There was nothing exciting out there to see out there, anyway. "It doesn't sound like the curse cares what they do as long as they do it inside the city walls. Getting people to trust us enough that they want to talk, I think that's gonna be the real problem. Jakarth talked to us. But only because we bribed him."

Hank nodded slowly. "Yeah. He talked because we could bribe him. And he's in pretty much the same situation as everyone else here." The Ranger sighed, hating the thought that was already forming in his mind. "This is what Dungeon Master meant by saying they're on the point of capitulation. They're ... broken, I guess. Hopeless. You've seen it. They're on the brink of starvation and really need basic things just to survive. If we can't get people to talk to us any other way, maybe we can use that." He raked his fingers through his long hair and tried not to look at the horrified expression he knew was crossing Sheila's face at his suggestion. "I really, really don't like what I'm about to say here, but if Jakarth was willing to talk in exchange for a free meal, someone else will, too."

Diana saw where he was going, and, though she didn't like the idea any more than anyone else, she opened one of the canvas packs that Lord Tolan had given them. It was full of small nuts very similar to filberts, which they had gathered on their first day of travel toward Dastirum, and which they had not given to the desperate citizens at the gates. "So we dangle a carrot, or in this case a handful of nuts, and hope we can tempt someone into opening up."

"This is what we've come to?" The comment, surprisingly, was from Eric, who sat shaking his head in disbelief. "Good God, and I thought my dad could be ruthless!"

"Look, I don't like the idea of bribery any more than you do, but I don't know what else to do to make people want to talk to us." In fact, Hank looked vaguely sickened by his own idea. Sheila took pity on him when she saw this; her expression softened and she quietly took one of his hands in both of hers.

"At least what we're doing isn't going to hurt anyone," the Thief reasoned after a moment, ever the mediator. "It's not like they're actually running a risk by talking to us. So maybe we can just think of it as a ... a reward. Presto's right, Jakarth didn't say there was anything about the curse that would stop them from just speaking about it. And maybe ... well, maybe even if they don't want to talk to us, we can give them some of our food anyway. That might make them trust us a little more."

"Good idea. Okay, then, why don't we split into pairs and see what we can find out," Diana was saying as she divided up their small hoard of nuts. Whatever she personally thought of the moral implications of bribing these people by waving a basic need before their eyes, she was obviously trying very hard not to dwell on it. "We're obviously new in town, so we can play stupid about the curse if we need to. It's not far from the truth."

"All right. It's not much, but at least we've got a plan," Hank said, getting to his feet and taking charge as having a goal pushed everyone into organized action. "Come on, guys, let's see what we can pull together."

"Wait a minute," Sheila protested, looking with clear concern from Hank to her little brother. "We? All of us? Are you sure it's smart for all of us to go?"

Hank picked up her meaning instantly, and added with only the barest pause, "Bobby, you stay here with Uni. Keep her out of sight, and if it looks like anyone at all is looking for you, get in the cellar and don't make a sound, you understand me?"

"But I--" Bobby began, but Hank cut him off with a shake of his head.

"No 'buts,' kiddo. Uni has to stay here where it's safe, and she needs protection. I know it's a big responsibility, but I think you're old enough to handle it, aren't you?"

Maybe someday, Bobby would figure out how easily he could be manipulated, but for now, the words had the desired effect. In fact, Diana and Eric both had to turn away and hide their amused expressions as Bobby stood straight up and puffed out his chest at the challenge. "You bet I can handle it!" he shot back. "Nobody's gonna get past Bobby the Barbarian!"

"Good," Hank nodded. "Just don't knock the house down around your ears, okay?" After giving this instruction, he glanced at Sheila and noticed by the stubborn look in her eyes that the situation did not have her full approval. Whatever Bobby thought of his own abilities, his older sister clearly and correctly thought that he still needed someone looking after him. "And, um ..." Hank decided quickly. "I want someone else to stay here and keep an extra eye out."

"Got it," Presto volunteered. "There's a couple things, uh, experiments, I guess, that I want to try to work on. Kinda like what I did for Helix, you know, see if there's anything I can do here. If I can get my Hat to work, that is. Don't worry," he said in response to the concerned expressions creeping onto his friends' faces. "I'm pretty sure I won't blow the place up. 'Sides, I'm the one that's gotta try conjuring up dinner, right?"

"Okay, just don't advertise it," Hank advised. "The last thing we need is another mob scene if they start thinking your Hat can feed everybody."

Presto nodded quietly, not taking Hank's statement for an insult in the least. He hoped that someday he would be able to control his Hat well enough to provide for almost a thousand starving people, but right now he knew he was lucky if he could accurately and consistently whip up a loaf of bread and some bananas to share with his friends. It was better than nothing, but he couldn't feed this entire town.

"Okay, so I'll take Captain Shiny here and we'll go work the west side of the town," Diana said, grabbing Eric by the ear and tugging just hard enough to convince him that he really wanted to stand up. "You and Sheila take the other side."

"Right," Hank agreed, catching the bag of nuts that Diana tossed to him, then handing it to Sheila. "Let's all meet back here by the time the last sun goes down behind the city walls. Presto, if anything goes wrong here, send up a flare or something and we'll be back right away. Okay, everyone? Let's go."

**ooo**

"So you really don't know how the curse was placed?"

"No, Miss, I don't know nothin' about magic." The old man reached for another nut and broke into it hungrily.

Sheila sighed. This was the fourth person in two hours that they'd gotten to talk, but it was all the same. Everyone knew what the curse would do, but no one had any specifics on how it did what it did. Was it a purely magical curse that paralyzed this town, or was it the effect of a cursed artifact? Had some sort of demons or evil spirits been summoned to grip the town? No one knew. Or no one remembered. Or else they were just too worn out and broken to care any more. Or, most likely, no one here knew enough about magic to tell them anything useful. Whatever the reason, she and Hank kept running up against the same brick wall. It was getting late, and their ration of nuts was dwindling.

Noting Sheila's quiet frustration, Hank quickly took over the questioning. "Sir, do you at least remember what the Duke of Darkness said?"

"That, I do." The man's face darkened as he remembered the day his town and its inhabitants had died, even though so many had been unfortunate enough to live through it. "He'd put a curse around the walls of the city," he explained, obviously hoping for another handful of nuts. "What he said was that if anyone or any living thing bigger than a, than a dragonfly, I think, left the confines of the walls, that our flesh would be burned from our bones by the fire from the sky -- and mind ye, we all saw it happen more than once. And our houses would burn and fall in when the ground opened up, and the wells would fill with blood and all our crops -- what few is left now -- would all wither and die. He just didn't say why."

Sheila tried very hard to not make a disgusted face. The bit about the wells filling with blood was a new one. From the sound of it, the one working well in this town remained full of clean water, so she hoped it was one of those inflated rumors that gains momentum long after the original event. On the other hand, this man was not the first one they'd spoken to who remembered the Duke cursing their crops as well. Jakarth had thought the paltry performance of the town's gardens was due to poor soil, but it seemed more likely that their original host simply hadn't heard or else had forgotten in the overwhelming panic of the moment.

"Okay, so this Duke guy was up on the walls shouting at all of you," Hank reiterated. This part of the story had not changed from person to person. "Did he do anything weird or unusual that you saw? Or have anything in his hands aside from the glowing Sphere thing?"

"No, he just ... I dunno, waved his arms around," the man explained while half-heartedly demonstrating the gesture. "Said some stuff I couldn't understand. Not much else, then he disappeared and left us here."

Sheila frowned at this. "Has he ever been back?" she asked. "I mean, if he expects you to surrender, doesn't he have to be here to hear the town say it?"

"Don't think he expects us to surrender," the man sighed. "Figure he expects us to die."

"I ... see," Hank nodded, realizing this interview was coming to a close. He gave a slight incline of his head to Sheila, who complied by giving the man another handful of the nuts as a thank-you. "Okay, well, if you think of anything else you'd like to tell us, we'll be in the town square tomorrow afternoon. Come find us, all right?"

"Sure," the man nodded absently, already digging into the pile of nuts. He barely even noticed when his two young visitors quietly slipped out his door and shut it behind them.

"Well?" Sheila asked after she and Hank had walked a block or two down the street in silence, wandering in the general direction of the town square. She had one hand pressed under her nose, trying to block the town's lingering odor of rot. "Did you get anything out of that? It didn't sound to me like he told us anything new."

Shrugging, Hank pondered everything the man had said for a moment longer. "I think we can at least narrow it down to a purely magical curse," he finally said. "It doesn't sound like there's an object or cursed idol, or whatever you want to call it that's causing all of this. Everybody we've talked to pretty much agrees that the Duke basically just stood there and shouted and waved his arms, which sounds to me like he cast some sort of spell. Presto would know better than I do. Here, come on, let's sit down for a minute."

They had reached the town square, which, after the original attack by the Duke of Darkness, resembled nothing more than a blast zone. Near the center, the remains of a large, circular fountain stood dry but halfway intact. Remaining parts of its outer rim were fairly flat, and the two of them utilized this as a place to sit.

For a few minutes, they sat quietly, side-by-side, staring across the remains of the town square, both lost in their own thoughts. With the scant information they had gleaned so far, their prospects looked bad. Try as she might, Sheila couldn't see an easy solution, and soon found herself resting her cheek against Hank's shoulder, quietly seeking the strength and support he offered. She sighed, and moment or two later, his arm slipped gently into place around her waist.

"You going to make me ask?" he finally said quietly, which caused Sheila to start slightly and look up at him. Her breath caught in her throat when she saw on his face the clear intensity of the concern he felt for her.

"I ... no, I mean, I ..." Sheila blushed slightly and glanced away for a moment. There had been more than just concern in those bright blue eyes that watched her, and rather than unnerving her, the thought gave her a certain, quiet strength. It helped her finally collect the thoughts that she had been trying not to consider all afternoon. "It's ... well, okay. We're not in front of everyone else now. It's just me, so you don't have to put on an act because you're worried about upsetting Bobby or Presto or getting Eric on your case." She chewed her lip for a second, wishing the two of them could be having a much different conversation than the one they were having now. "Let's be honest. We're stuck here, and we're going to be stuck here a long time, aren't we?"

Hank shook his head slowly, staring off again at the desolate, blasted rubble around them. "Well ... maybe right now, it sort of looks like coming here was a bad idea, but I'm not ready to say it for sure just yet," he answered noncommitally. "Don't forget, help is supposed to be coming in a few days."

"I know, I know. I want to believe that," Sheila replied, but the bleakness of their situation was beginning to show on her face again. "So let's say Lord Tolan makes it to Yarfell Proper, and he convinces their Queen to send help, and it arrives within the week like he promised. Then what? They can throw in all the food and supplies they want, but if the curse isn't broken, we still can't leave. How are we going to get home if we can't leave here and go looking for a portal back?"

Hank grimaced slightly, though he would not let Sheila see it. The same thought had occurred to him, too, but he'd been trying to avoid thinking about it until he had a better handle on the situation. Despite Sheila's insistence that he could tell her anything, for everyone's sake, he knew better than to let his own doubts bubble to the surface. As their leader, he had to be sure of himself, and above all, rational, especially in light of his poor behavior that had led them to near-disaster in the Dragon's Graveyard. "Maybe we shouldn't let ourselves get too far into the 'what ifs,' okay?" he suggested, then noticed with distress the unshed tears of frustration beginning to glisten in her eyes. He managed a calm smile, just for her, and pulled her a little closer as he reminded gently, "Remember what Diana said? We haven't even tried to break the curse yet, so let's not start to worry until after we at least give it a shot."

"Right, you're right," Sheila said, not entirely convinced, and the words came out with a repressed sniffle that left Hank fighting a losing battle with himself. She looked so lost and vulnerable at that moment, so very much in need of the solace that he desperately wanted to give. Simple words of reassurance obviously weren't enough. Every protective instinct in his body silently urged him to kiss her, to hold her even closer and promise her that everything would be all right. And he would have, if only he could be more certain the promise would be true.

Still, Sheila needed something to comfort her, and when they were alone like this, he was not quite so hesitant to show his affection towards her as he was in front of the others. Turning to face her, Hank laid his forehead against hers in a gesture only slightly less intimate than an actual kiss. "We'll come up with something eventually," he whispered softly, waiting until he felt her slight nod before adding, "just give it a little time. We'll be okay."

"I know," Sheila answered quietly, resolutely blinking away the tears. "We always figure something out in the end."

"That's right," Hank encouraged. "Just remember that, okay?" Placing one finger under her chin, he tipped Sheila's face up so that he could look directly into her damp eyes, and gave her a gentle smile with all the confidence he could muster. "It'll be all right somehow," he assured again, beginning to feel a little more confident himself, now. When she finally smiled back, the two of them leaned together on some unspoken signal for just the briefest of kisses, a bare ghosting of lips brushing against one another. "We just have to figure out how," he finally admitted quietly.

Sheila gave a small laugh, which she tried her best not to let sound too bitter or lost. "That's the hard part," she mentioned, then straightened herself decisively and wiped at her still-moist eyes. "There's always the Duke's Sphere, we can't forget about that," she reminded them both as cheerfully as she could. "So maybe we should check in with Eric and Diana, see if they've had any better luck than us. They sure couldn't have had much worse."

**ooo**

"We're all going to die! Don't you understand?! We're all going to die and now you're going to rot here with the rest of us!"

"Sir! Sir! Please, calm down!" Diana pleaded over the near-hysterical shouting for at least the tenth time. "I can assure you, we don't have any intention of dying here. If you'll just ..."

"Nobody had any intention of dying here! Not until they're old and gray and lived a full life, anyway! But we're all going to die now and so are you!" The man doing the shouting had been the town's butcher, until the slaughterhouse had been destroyed and the last of Dastirum's animals had been eaten. His younger brother, who was also his assistant, stood off in a corner of the empty shop that was connected to their small home, facing away from their guests, and clearly fighting back hopeless sobs as his sibling railed against the curse that was murdering their town. "Any more, I think it would be better if everyone just killed themselves now! Nice and quick, not a long, drawn-out starving to death!"

"Dude," Eric interrupted the big man with a little more bravado than he actually felt, "I keep telling you, that's not gonna happen. If you just tell us what you know, we can probably figure out how to break this curse and nobody else is gonna have to starve to death."

"The curse can't be broken!" the butcher's brother mumbled from his corner.

"It can't be broken, and we ain't got nothing to feed people with!" the butcher agreed, almost as if he hadn't heard Eric at all. "Look at this place," he added, gesturing around the bare shop. "The rafters used to hang with smoked sausages and cured hams and salt pork. Then the place got raided by a hungry mob. Left us with nothing for ourselves. Not a scrap of meat anywhere. Look!" he said angrily, sounding almost insane as he stuffed his hand into a wide, ceramic jar and pulled out a handful of fine, green and black flakes. "Plenty of spices, but not a bit of sausage to season anywhere!" He threw the herbs to the floor in disgust, then kicked over an open burlap bag, which spilled a cascade of tiny, white crystals onto the wooden slats. "All the salt you could want to cure the best bacon this side of Merganser Point, and not a rasher in this entire town!"

Helplessly, Eric and Diana looked at each other and shrugged as the butcher ranted almost insanely about his stack of fine blackwood but no pheasants to smoke with it, and various other things in his shop rendered useless without a supply of meat. As it had been with the other people they had spoken with this afternoon, they were getting nowhere. None of those others had descended quite this far into madness, however.

As if he could read their thoughts, the butcher's brother sighed and left his corner to approach the two youngsters. "Sorry about him," the tall man said, head held glumly down. "It's hard knowing that we're all gonna die like this. He's just so angry about it all. Me? I just try to accept it because getting mad won't do nothing. There's nothing nobody can do, and maybe you two ought to figure out how to accept that, too. The last thing we need is for a bunch of strangers to do something stupid and call the curse down on us again. We've lost enough already. So maybe you better go back to your friends and try not to cause any trouble."

"But sir, we think ..." Diana tried again

"Just go," the butcher's assistant dismissed, waving his hand with finality.

Again, Eric and Diana glanced at one another, each of them at a loss for what to do now. They had gained nothing from this conversation but a collective chill up the spine. In the back room, where the butcher had retreated, there was the sound of something breaking as it was forcefully hurled against a wall. Neither of them felt particularly safe being anywhere near such violent displays of temper. They didn't like the way they'd been dismissed, but neither of them could deny that leaving was probably the safer course of action.

"After you," Eric finally said, gallantly sweeping his arm towards the door as he and Diana arrived at the same conclusion that it was time to leave before the tensions grew any higher.

"Thank you, sir," Diana said, though it was unclear whether she was addressing Eric or the butcher. Eric slammed the door behind them with a little more force than was entirely necessary.

"Well, terrific," Diana said with angry sarcasm, then let herself deflate a little as they marched glumly in the general direction of their temporary house. All afternoon, she was trying every trick in her book to keep from admitting to herself that they'd bitten off more than they could chew this time, but the disconcerting experience in the butcher's shop had started pushing the nagging fears past her defenses. "We talked to five people this afternoon," she said, gathering her thoughts into some semblance of order. "What did we learn?"

Holding up a hand, Eric counted off on his fingers, "Nothing, nothing, twenty people have died from what sounds like a strep throat infection in the past four weeks but that may or may not have anything to do with the curse, nothing, and we're all gonna die."

"Great." Looking over the town's western wall, Diana could see that the suns were trekking slowly towards the horizon. It was getting late. "Well, we're out of nuts and there probably isn't much more to find out tonight, anyway. Let's head back, see what Hank and Sheila found out."

"And let's see if Presto's whipped anything up for dinner," Eric added, rubbing his stomach. It had been a long day, and none of them had paused for any lunch beyond the waybread they had shared with Jakarth. "I'm starving."

Diana glanced down an alley and saw a pinched, waif-like figure watching them distrustfully with dull, sunken eyes. The child scraped bits of lichen and moss from the back of a dank, stone building, and, to the Acrobat's vague horror, gobbled the dry, green stuff desperately. "No," she corrected Eric quietly, "you're not."


	5. Pieces of the Puzzle

**Dastirum**

Chapter 5: Pieces of the Puzzle

**ooo**

"I got nothing."

Disconsolate, Presto sat on the floor of their borrowed house, surrounded by several makeshift potions in "cauldrons" that were nothing more than the home's abandoned cookware, filled with water and a variety of herbs and other, less-identifiable substances. "Although this one's got sage and rosemary in it, so it might make a good soup if you threw in some chicken and a couple carrots." He prodded one of the pots with his toe glumly. "But as far as breaking the curse? Nope. Sorry. I ... I tried."

"We know you tried, Presto," Hank offered kindly before Eric could open his mouth and snap out some disparaging comment. The four of them had met up at the end of the street and returned to their temporary housing just a few minutes ago, to find Presto depressed, Uni snoozing, and Bobby prying the wainscoting off the walls out of sheer boredom. "It doesn't help that we haven't got the slightest clue where to begin."

"So ... then, you got nothing, too?" Presto asked as he rose, picking up a random pot to toss its contents out the broken window.

"Nothing useful," Diana acknowledged. She spared a quick glance into the next room and tried not to smile as voices there rose slightly. Sheila was, as usual, reprimanding Bobby, this time for the damage he'd caused to the walls. "We're pretty sure that there's no actual, cursed physical object that's causing all of this. It's some sort of spell. But nobody knows what or how, so like Hank said, that doesn't tell you at all where to start."

"Somebody's GOT to know something!" Presto answered with an uncharacteristic level of frustration in his voice, slamming the pot against the window sill. "There's, what did he say, nine hundred people in this town? There's got to be somebody here that knows something about magic! Somebody who knows enough to tell me what the Duke did, other than just," here he threw his hands in the air grandiosely, "waved his arms around and shouted a lot!"

"Dude," Eric interrupted, a little unnerved at seeing the normally mild Magician getting this upset. Sure, the Cavalier had made no secret of his own frustration, but he counted on Presto to be the calm and rational half of their friendship. "We only talked to about nine or ten people today. That's what, only ten percent of this whole town?"

"One percent," Presto automatically corrected, forever doing Eric's math homework. Luckily, the simple math had the effect of triggering the return of his rational side. Taking a deep breath, he removed his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose tiredly. "Yeah, I know, I know," he sighed after a pause, "maybe someone does know something, and you just haven't talked to the right person yet."

"That's exactly right," Hank agreed as cheerfully as possible. "So we'll keep trying tomorrow. And again the next day, if we have to. We'll get someone to tell us what we need to know, even though it won't be so easy now that we've run out of food to bribe people into talking."

"Oh, there I can help you," Presto answered. He shoved one of the empty pots beneath a cupboard beside the house's old cookstove, and a small, ironic smile crept onto his face as he swept open the door with a flourish. Out of the cabinet poured a noisy, clattering cascade of hard, red pellets that quickly filled the pot and spilled over onto the floor. "Dried kidney beans," Presto informed them, rather proudly. "Probably about, like, fifty pounds. I was trying to conjure up some spell components to work with while you guys were out, but I got these instead. Don't ask me what the Hat was thinking, but there you go."

**ooo**

In addition to dried kidney beans, Presto's Hat eventually coughed up what appeared to be two raw chicken or grouse breasts, one onion, and, after one completely failed attempt, a large bunch of slightly limp celery. Food was food, so Sheila took these supplies, diced them up with Eric's help, and tossed them into the improvised cauldron that Presto had said would make a better soup than it had a potion.

It had been a meager supper, but as they sat on the floor, sipping the soup from mugs and bowls they had scavenged from the house, everyone was acutely aware that this was more food than any of the families in Dastirum ate in a normal day. Even Uni seemed to know it, and looked almost guilty as she munched on the remainder of the celery.

"So now what?" Eric asked as the evening wore on. The small fire still burned in the cookstove, and with the firebox's door open, provided the only light as night fell and the house grew otherwise dark. A bit earlier, while trying to figure out why his Hat seemed to be fizzling out on him, Presto had managed to conjure up a deck of playing cards. A few rounds of rummy passed a little of the time even though Bobby found the whole idea boring, and Sheila had never been much for competitive card games. The rest of them had finally reached the point where nobody was interested in dealing another hand.

"Well, I don't want to play another card game," Diana sighed, leaning back against a wall and trying to get comfortable. "We've talked and talked about this whole curse thing and what to do about it, and I don't think there's anything else to say until we try to find out more tomorrow. I found a couple books in the back of the house, but it's too dark to read right now. And too dark for card tricks," she added upon noticing how Presto was shuffling the deck with growing theatricism. "So I vote we hit the hay so we can get an early start in the morning."

"If there was any hay to hit," Eric countered. Not a single blanket or pillow remained in this looted house; even the mattress was gone from the bed frame. There was no option for them but to sleep on the cold, hard floor tonight. "Man, I'm going to be stiff in the morning," he continued as he wrapped his cape around himself as a makeshift blanket and settled himself into a corner near the stove.

"Can it, Eric, we've had worse," Hank began. "At least tonight, we've got a roof–"

"FIFTY-TWO PICKUP!"

Eric nearly jumped right out of his skin at the shout, but Hank just sighed and rolled his eyes as the two of them were unceremoniously showered with a spray of playing cards. Apparently, Bobby had found a card game that wasn't so boring after all. At least, it might not have been a boring game if he could have, in fact, enticed anyone else to join in.

"Oh, give me a break," Eric muttered, pulling his cape up over his head and studiously pretending to be asleep.

Hank merely flicked away the Four of Diamonds, which had landed precariously on his left shoulder. "Just for *that,* kiddo," he told a grinning Bobby, "you get first watch tonight."

**ooo**

Dawn came with a gloomy silence that the kids were unused to in a town of any size. There should have been roosters crowing, dogs barking, the cheerfully chaotic bustle of farmers setting up their wares in the market.

Instead, the morning's silence was so oppressive that when a door slammed three or four houses down, Diana actually jumped.

Bobby's watch of the previous evening had lasted until sometime around midnight, when he'd woken his sister to take the next shift. Then, a few hours later, Sheila had given Diana her turn. Now, the Acrobat stared mutely out the window, as she had done for the last three hours. Standing watch was a long-established habit of this group, a nightly rotation they employed wherever and whenever they felt it was not safe for them to all be asleep and unaware at once. Of course, that essentially meant anywhere they found themselves in the Realm, but Diana had to admit to herself that sometimes, like this night, the duty was excruciatingly boring. Though they halfway expected the townsfolk to come pounding down the door looking for fresh meat at any minute, it seemed that word about Uni's presence hadn't gotten around after all. None of the night's watchers had seen even the slightest bit of excitement from the post at the broken window.

Had any of the watchers thought to look around *inside* their borrowed house at just the right moment, perhaps the watch duty might not have been quite so excruciatingly boring after all.

But it was dawn now, and the light of morning chased away the shifting shadows and unseen demons of the night. Diana yawned, stretching herself to ease the stiffness that had been gnawing at her back for the past hour. Everyone else had slept in late enough, she decided. It was time to get up and face a second day of refusing to believe they were all trapped here.

**ooo**

Eight details of thirty soldiers each stood at attention as the morning light broke over the stone and marble walls of the city of Yarfell Proper, their ranks being inspected by a dozen officers on horseback. The men were dressed in light armor, suited for a long march, and each bore a pack of emergency supplies on his back. The suns-light shone off the polished crest of Yarfell emblazoned in bronze on their breastplates.

Lord Tolan had safely reached the city of Yarfell Proper the day before, and, as he had promised, immediately brought the news of Dastirum's plight to the young Queen. Sensible beyond her years, and concerned for the besieged people who should have had her protection, the Queen had ordered advance troops to be mustered under the command of her husband, and ready to depart for the beleaguered town by the next morning. Emergency relief supplies, aid workers, and more soldiers were still being raised, and were planned to follow the first troops by the next day.

From the window of a guard tower at the gates of Yarfell Proper, the Queen called out her blessing to the assembled troops. A signal was raised on silver trumpets, and the soldiers stepped forward in precise unison. The first company to pass beneath the Queen's proud and watchful eye and through the gates was the officers' cavalry, bright and colorful beneath the fluttering flags of Yarfell and the banner of the Royal family. The march to Dastirum had begun, led by none less than Yarfell's Prince Consort himself.

**ooo**

"I'm thinking this is pretty much useless," Eric groused for about the tenth time today.

"It's not useless," Presto insisted, also for about the tenth time today. He gingerly shifted the sack over his shoulder, and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. At least he was finally getting used to the strange, rotten smell in the air, but all in all, the aura of the town was wearing him down. More uncertainly, he added, "It can't be. We've got to find out something that will help, and there really isn't any other way. We ... just haven't talked to the right people yet, right?"

"Who knows? The 'right people' might already be dead or something," Eric shrugged. Then, grudgingly, he admitted, "But I think you're right about spreading the word to have people who know something come talk to us, instead of us trying to find them. That's gonna save us a lot of time and effort."

After this morning's rather bizarre breakfast, consisting of something that the Hat had produced which tasted well enough but did not bear too much scrutiny of its ingredients, Diana had volunteered to stay in the house with Uni and the loudly whining, very bored Bobby. Presto didn't think he could achieve much more by "just dinking around with potions," as he'd put it. He had to know where to start. It wasn't that he didn't think his friends were up to the task, but he felt that the best way to get the information he needed was for himself to talk to the people living under the curse. Maybe someone had already revealed something vital, but his friends, who were not quite so accustomed to magic and how it worked, might have unintentionally dismissed it as unimportant. So he'd taken a sack of dried beans and paired up with Eric, seeking out anyone who was willing to talk in the west half of the town, while Hank and Sheila again covered the east half.

Presto had come up with the idea of finding and interviewing the town's mayor. Surely, if someone were in even a nominal leadership position in this town, he (or she) would know a little more than the average person they spoke to. It was a good thought. Unfortunately, he and Eric soon discovered that the mayor and his family had been some of the first to die in the strep throat epidemic a month ago.

The suns were almost directly overhead now. Presto had not found out anything more than his friends had known the evening before, other than gaining a deeper insight into the desperation that gripped this town. Noon, however, was when they had let people know they would be waiting in the town square, and that was where the two of them were heading now. If anyone had anything to tell them, the townspeople would know where to find them, and, as Eric had put it, to "look for the handsome guy in the stylish Cavalier's regalia."

"Oh, hey, there's Hank and Sheila," Presto pointed out when he and Eric emerged from the alley they'd been traversing. "Gosh, they don't look too happy, do they?"

Stopping short, Eric frowned, looking towards their friends who were already waiting in the town square, and realized that Presto was right. Even at this distance, it was clear that the Ranger looked highly agitated and the Thief was nearly in tears. "No ... they don't," he agreed with a sharply spiking level of concern. "Something happened. Come on, Presto, move it!"

Without another word, Eric dashed towards the town square, leaving Presto to follow along as best his flapping robes and ten-pound sack of dried beans would allow.

"Guys! Guys! You okay? What happened?" Eric called when he was close enough. Hank whirled around at the shout, and if there had been any question that the Ranger was on edge, it was clearly answered when he actually drew an arrow on Eric.

"Whoa, hey, it's just me!" Eric said, screeching to a halt and spreading his hands in an open gesture rather than bringing his Shield up in a defensive pose.

Hank's eyes widened in surprise. "Crap!" he muttered, willing the arrow away the second he realized his mistake. Beside him, Sheila almost looked like she had been ready to disappear, but now that she realized who was calling to them, she quickly ducked her head and rubbed furiously at her eyes.

"Um, jumpy much?" Eric asked with a lame grin, trying to defuse the tension, but Hank abruptly waved off the attempt at humor.

"Eric, where's Presto? We ..." Just then, Hank caught sight of the fast-approaching Magician over Eric's shoulder. "Presto!" he shouted. "Get over here and put that sack somewhere where nobody will see it!"

"Huh? O ... okay, why?" Presto asked, coming to a halt beside Eric as he pulled his Hat off. Quickly, he stuffed the sack of beans back into the magical receptacle, where they disappeared to who-knew-where. "What happened?"

Hank huffed something under his breath furiously, then glanced at Sheila with concern. "Well, we pretty much got mugged," he explained simply and with a decidedly angry shrug.

"Mugged? Oh, geez, man, are you guys all right?" Eric gasped, looking back and forth between the two of them. At least neither of them seemed to be obviously bruised or bleeding. "Who? I mean, how bad was it?"

"We're all right, I guess," Sheila answered him, the tone of her voice indicating they were more shaken up than anything, and, as Eric surmised, not in any physical pain. "There were, I don't know, maybe nine or ten of them. Some townspeople. They just wanted food."

"Word got around, I guess," Hank added, shaking his head because he was now beginning to realize their mistake. All four of them had been actively letting the Dastirites they encountered know that they'd be available to talk in the town square around noon. Word had spread, it seemed, but not the one they intended. The starving people of Dastirum knew these young strangers had shown up with a supply of food which they had been handing out in exchange for talking about the curse. Not everyone in the town had something to say, but everyone needed to eat. Once it was announced where and when the food-bearers would be, it was no stretch to assume that people would come for it, whether or not they had any words of wisdom to offer in return.

A mob scene broke out. Smaller in scale than the one at the gates the day before, it was nonetheless frightening. When Hank had realized there was no reasoning with that kind of desperation, he told Sheila to turn invisible and run before anyone got hurt, then handed over the sack of beans and dashed for safety himself. Neither of them stayed around to see how it ended.

"Man," Presto commented when Hank finished the story. "Things are worse here than I thought they were. I mean, I knew we didn't want to advertise what my Hat could do, but who woulda thought that a sack of beans would start a riot?"

"Then it's just flat out luck you and me didn't get mobbed, too," Eric agreed, realizing just how fortunate they'd been to have gone unaccosted, despite having flaunted their food supply all this time. They couldn't afford to take any more chances, and were going to have to play it a little closer to the vest from now on. "So ... you guys okay?" he asked Hank and Sheila gingerly. "You want to head back to the house or something?"

Sheila, who'd now had enough time to get a grip on herself, straightened up a bit and reasoned, "You know, I think we're all right. I mean, we weren't actually hurt or anything. Just shook up. They're probably not going to mob us again since it looks like all our food is gone now." Sighing, she decided that she was well enough to keep going for a while longer, albeit a bit reluctantly. "So maybe we ought to stay around for a little bit, like we told people we would. What if someone who knows something comes looking for us? We ought to be here if they want to tell us something."

"All right, then," Hank agreed slowly. "Let's stick around for an hour or two. It can't do us much worse than we did going door-to-door."

**ooo**

Without a watch, nobody could really tell how much time had passed for them as they loitered in the town square, but the best guess was that it had been about an hour and a half. Eric had strutted around the plaza at first, displaying his highly recognizable outfit so that anyone looking for them would have an easy time finding them. He'd given up after what he guessed was half an hour, when the only person who approached him did so just to ask if he had any food to share. The few other people he saw gave him surly attitudes and resentful looks, and walked away muttering to themselves, just loudly enough that Eric could hear what they were saying if he chose to listen. Their words and their bitter attitudes heightened the awareness of the shabby, threadbare condition of themselves and their town as opposed to the Cavalier's clean, well-repaired clothes and his comparatively well-fed appearance. It was one of the few times in Eric's life that he honestly felt embarrassed for looking as good as he did. He'd sat down behind the fountain shortly thereafter, and hadn't said much since.

So far, the time spent here had essentially come to naught, but as they waited in vain for someone to show up and talk, the four of them witnessed a very disturbing scene. A universal fact of life is that pigeons are attracted to town squares, as if it was bred into the birds generations ago to fly to open plazas in towns across the world, expecting a handout. Dastirum was one of the few places where this genetic programming proved to be a fatal error. Three pigeons fluttered down out of the sky, probably to peck at a few dried beans that had been spilled in the earlier confrontation. As soon as the birds landed on the cobblestones, half a dozen people seemed to come out of nowhere, attacking with stones, slings, and small bow and arrow sets. The pigeons were killed almost instantly, hit with a dozen blows from all sides, and then a fight broke out amongst their starving slayers over the meager carcasses.

Sheila had to turn her eyes away from the brutal carnage, but despite how upsetting the sight was to her, she could admit that it had to be done for more reasons than just putting dinner on someone's table. The curse awaited every living thing bigger than a dragonfly. If the pigeons flew off, over the walls, who knew what kind of wholesale destruction would rain down upon the town. She began to truly despise the Duke of Darkness for pushing these people to this level of desperation.

Those poor people. Those poor pigeons. Sheila felt equally bad for both.

That had been almost an hour ago. Presto had wandered off, about twenty minutes ago, saying he wanted to look around a bit. He had made a point of not having any food with him that could tempt the townspeople into another attack, so the others weren't too worried about him being out there on his own.

Hank and Sheila were again seated on the rim of the broken fountain, their conversation serving to distract them from all the terrible things that had happened to them in the last handful of hours. They studiously sat themselves just a little bit apart from each other, to avoid giving Eric any fodder for his customary snide comments, but the Cavalier was apparently in a foul mood, or else bored out of his skull. Either way, he was quite obviously not paying attention. He sat with his back against the fountain's basin, fiddling with some sort of diversion he held in his hands.

"... don't get it," Hank was saying to Sheila. "Venger's trying to get his fingers in every pie in the Realm. I know Dungeon Master said that Venger hasn't pegged the Duke of Darkness as a threat, but you'd think a control freak like him would have at least noticed something by now."

"That Jakarth guy said something about Venger, didn't he?" Sheila asked, deep enough in the mystery to have mercifully forgotten their earlier trauma, even if only temporarily. "Something about being afraid to attack this kingdom?"

"He said Venger learned his lesson to not show his face anywhere in this kingdom about three years ago, when the Queen took the throne," recited a bored voice from the other side of the fountain. Perhaps someone was paying a little more attention than he'd been letting on.

"Um ... right," Sheila answered, still a little disconcerted by Eric's uncanny ability to do that. "But what if maybe the Duke of Darkness and Venger are actually, you know, in cahoots?"

"What, you mean like since Venger's too afraid to come attack this place himself, he's having someone else do it for him?" Hank pondered the possibility. "That doesn't make much sense, not if what Dungeon Master said about the Duke being a potential threat to Venger is true. Unless, well ..." Hank gave a thoughtful 'hm' as a new scenario played out in his mind. "Now you've got me thinking. Maybe the Duke is planning on stabbing Venger in the back once he gets this place? There could be something here that will-"

"Um, excuse me?"

Hank and Sheila looked up in surprise. Even Eric's head popped up from the other side of the fountain. They had long since given up on the possibility of anyone taking up their offer to speak to them, so to have someone standing here now came as just a bit of a shock.

There were four of them, two men and two women. They were probably in their mid- to late-twenties, though beneath the shabbiness and scragginess of starvation, it was hard to tell for sure.

"Uh, hi," Hank faltered for a moment, then firmly shook off both the surprise and the rising edge of fear that they were going to get mugged again. Maybe these strangers really were here with information. It was possible. More confidently, he asked, "Can we help you?"

"Um, maybe, I don't know," said the man who had first spoken, uncertainly. He was unremarkable, of average height with nondescript, sandy hair and a beard that didn't look like it wanted to grow in fully yet. "We heard there was some new people in town, and that they was trying to break the curse. We heard they was supposed to be here in the square this afternoon. That you guys?"

"Yes, that's us," Sheila answered, then explained as gently as possible, "but I'm afraid we don't have any more food to offer you, like we said we would. It's all gone."

Four faces fell at the news, and these townspeople looked at one another sadly. But then the speaker straightened himself as much as possible and said, "Well, 's not like we had anything to tell you about the curse anyway."

Hank's grip tightened imperceptibly on his Bow. If they'd come here knowing they had no useful information, did that mean these strangers had planned on mugging them for food, too?

"My name's Baris," the speaker introduced himself after a pause in which he apparently did not notice the Ranger's increased tension. "This here's my wife, Corheen," he said of a reddish brown-haired woman next to him. "That's her brother, Collin," he continued, indicating a comparatively stocky man of similar appearance to Corheen and with even less of a beard than Baris, "and that's his wife, Sora." The last woman was small, blonde, and highly freckled. Then he paused, expectantly.

"Oh," Hank realized after a second, taken aback by the strange normalcy of the moment. "Right. My name's Hank. This is Sheila."

Noticing their relaxed proximity to one another, and the easy familiarity with which Hank had introduced Sheila, the man named Collin guessed simply, "Your wife?"

"WHAT?" Sheila yelped, immediately flushing several shades of red at the innocent assumption. Hank's face quickly matched that same spectrum as he cringed in embarrassment on Sheila's behalf. He abruptly looked down and found a study of his boots to be tremendously fascinating. On the other side of the fountain, however, there came a gleeful snicker.

"Oh," Baris reasoned simply, nodding at his brother-in-law. "Not his wife, then."

"I ... we ... no!" Sheila continued to stammer, much to the confusion of the onlookers, who were clearly more than ready to just move on to the next topic. "We're not ... I mean, not yet! No! I mean, that's not what I mean ..."

"Hi, I'm Eric!" the Cavalier interrupted jauntily, saving the day in his own peculiar manner. Tossing aside a wooden project that he'd been idly whittling, which may have either been intended to be a tiny horse or a rather unfortunate squid, he came around to the other side of the fountain and offered his hand to shake. "No, they're not married. And yeah, we're new in town."

"And is it true you're trying to break the curse?" Baris asked.

"Trying, yeah," Eric answered, which was the closest he was going to come to admitting to these strangers that they weren't having any luck. "We don't want to be stuck here any more than you do."

"But you know what'll happen if you try to leave here while the curse is on us, right?" Baris continued, glancing around nervously at the shambles that had once been Dastirum's town square. "We can't survive much more destruction."

"We've heard," Hank stood and answered, having used Eric's momentary distraction to get a grip on himself. The Thief, on the other hand, looked like she was ready to curl up and disappear right then and there, but she settled for just ducking her face and chiding herself for being so ridiculous. "Quakes, fire from the sky, all that." He gestured widely, encompassing the entire town around them. "We can see a lot of it for ourselves. So we're not going to do anything stupid. We know we have to break the curse from the inside before we can leave."

"You realize what breaking the curse'll do?" Corheen asked then. "It'll bring the Duke o' Darkness himself here. He ain't going to let us go without a fight."

Hank gave a grim smile. "We know," he agreed. "In fact, we're counting on him showing up personally."

The four townspeople looked at each other for a long moment, digesting these newcomers' tale, and some unspoken agreement seemed to pass between them. Finally, Baris, who seemed to be the group's spokesperson, said, "If that's the case, then we want to help."

"Help?" Eric asked, looking at them curiously. "I thought you said you didn't have anything you could tell us about the curse."

"We don't," Baris agreed. "I mean, we want to help when it comes to fighting the Duke. I know it sounds crazy, because there ain't much left of our town. People's dying off every day. But it's our town and some of us don't want to just give it up without a fight. Problem is, the Duke ain't never shown up in person since he placed the curse. You can't fight a person if you can't look him in the eye. So if you're gonna bring the Duke here, we want to know 'cause we want a shot at him too."

Exchanging glances, Hank and Eric almost traded humorless smiles as well. While it didn't do much for breaking the curse, this was still the most encouraging news they'd heard since arriving in Dastirum. While they often fought to defend and liberate oppressed people all across the Realm, it was by far the best fight when the oppressed were willing to help defend and liberate themselves. Baris and company had just shown them that at least some small part of Dastirum still had a backbone.

"You got it," Hank agreed, offering Baris his hand to shake. "Tell us where you live. As soon as we figure out how to break the curse, we'll come get you so we can all be ready for the Duke to arrive."

**ooo**

While the others were speaking to Baris and his friends, Presto had wandered aimlessly until he found himself confronted by the weathered, open gates they had passed through the day before. He stared listlessly, pondering everything that had happened since their arrival. Had it really only been one day ago that they'd imprisoned themselves like this?

And what was it about this whole situation that he was missing?

There had to be an answer. He just wasn't seeing it. No curse was completely unbreakable, that much he knew. There was always a way. Some curses could be broken with a counter-spell or sacrifice. Others were broken when an object that helped place the original curse was destroyed. Occasionally, curses could be reversed by a blessing of equal power, and some minor curses could be defused simply by truly laughing at the one who placed them. There were, of course, curses that were ended when the terms of the curse were fulfilled, but it didn't sound like the Duke had offered terms. And then, there were the curses that dissipated when the one who placed it was killed.

The root of the problem was that Presto had no idea what kind they were facing. Then, too, there was that nagging feeling in the back of his mind that kept telling him there was something simple he was overlooking. What was it? Something about the town's walls. Or the gates. That was what it all boiled down to. The curse was on the walls and the gates.

Unconsciously, Presto moved slowly towards those gates, concentrating hard. There was something simple, just out of his reach. What was it? Why was he missing it? It was there, if he could only focus, just a little harder ... maybe then he could grab hold of those wispy tendrils of thought that tickled at his brain but stayed just out of his reach ... something about the walls ...

"What are you doing?"

"WHA?" Presto's voice jumped at least an octave from fright as he was grabbed from behind and spun around abruptly. A large townsman had hold of his shoulders, shaking him roughly and shouting fearfully in his face.

"What do you think you're doing, boy?" the man shouted, sounding nearly as panicked as Presto felt. "Don't you get near those gates! You want to bring the curse down on us? I won't let you! I don't want to die like that!"

"What?" Presto stammered, his teeth chattering together as he was shaken about like a rag doll. "I didn't ... I - I mean, I wasn't going to! I wasn't ..." Trying to take control of the situation, Presto raised his arms and used a quick self-defense move that Diana had taught him to break the man's grip on his shoulders. "Look! I'm sorry!"

The townsman staggered back a step, clearly surprised that his hands had been brushed aside so easily by such a scrawny kid. But the surprise did what Presto had intended: it caused the man to break off his panicked shouting. "You ... you ..." he attempted, clearly at a loss for what to say next.

"I'm sorry," Presto repeated, glancing around himself. Suddenly, he could see what had the man so upset: he had wandered much closer to the open gate than he had intended. Oh. Now, maybe he understood the stranger's fear. To an innocent passer-by, it might have looked like he intended to walk right through, and invoke the curse on all of Dastirum again. "I wasn't gonna go through the gates," he explained a little sheepishly. "I was just thinking."

"About how to break the curse," the stranger finished, with a hard, cynical edge to his voice. "So I heard. There's a bunch o' kids shown up in town, all crowing about how they're gonna break the curse and getting everyone's hopes up. That's you, ain't it?"

"Well, yeah," Presto faltered. "Of course we want to break the curse. I mean, um, you don't want to stay here and starve, do you?"

"No," was the frustrated reply. "But the curse ain't breakable. You think we haven't tried? We're gonna die here and there ain't nothing you or anyone else can do about it."

Gritting his teeth and trying not to be affected by the man's blind, depressing fatalism, Presto answered as cheerfully and confidently as he could. Which wasn't much, but it was better than nothing. "Look. I know you guys have tried. But I haven't. Um, not yet, anyway. I'm a Wizard, in case you couldn't tell. Maybe I can do something ..."

"You know what you can do?" the man interrupted bitterly. "You can stop getting peoples' hopes up for nothing. You can stop running around waving food under our noses and being all hoity-toity and high and mighty and giving people a handful of nuts and expecting us to fall down on our knees and thank you like you're gods coming to save us all. The curse can't be broken, so you can just stop trying to fool everyone because we can't take much more of this. Don't go getting everyone's hopes up because you're just gonna let us down. That'll be the end of this town if you do. Some o' us are thinking that the only way even stand a chance of getting outta this alive is if we just bow down and let the Duke o' Darkness take this place."

"But, I ..." Presto tried.

"But what? There ain't nothing you can do here. Just go," the man sighed, and the way he deflated reminded Presto very much of Jakarth, once his shield of frustration and anger had finally abandoned him. He gave the Magician a weak gesture of dismissal. "Go back to your friends and don't cause us no more trouble than you already have."

"Look, I'm sorry," Presto attempted again, but was interrupted before he could begin.

"Sorry? Sure. I know your type." The stranger uttered a bitter laugh. "You Wizards can't resist meddling in things until you make a big, fat mess of it all. Look, just swear you ain't gonna do nothing stupid and bring the Duke's curse down on us again," the man demanded sharply.

Offended, Presto drew himself up with every ounce of dignity he possessed. "I don't intend to do anything of the sort," he answered firmly. Then, finished with this conversation, he turned on his heel and marched down the street that would lead him back to the town square, where he knew his friends were waiting for him. As he stalked away, he muttered something under his breath that certainly could not be repeated in mixed company.

Too close, but disaster had been averted. Smiling in satisfaction, the large man nodded to himself, glanced briefly at the open gates, and then silently trudged homeward, toward his empty shop. Something was definitely going to have to be done now that these strange kids had arrived.

**ooo**

Later that afternoon, between Hank and Sheila's near-mugging, Presto's unsettling encounter at the gate, and the day's general lack of success, Eric was the only one in a remotely good mood as the four of them walked towards their borrowed house. That was not to say that the Cavalier was bright and cheerful, by any means, but somehow he found himself with the duty of lightening the mood. Ironic, perhaps, but he did the best he could.

"I so totally can not believe that Collin dude figured you guys were married," he teased Sheila, knowing it would get a rise out of the Thief, but, at the same time, correctly suspecting that maybe the idea was not completely unpleasant to her after all. "No, wait, maybe I can. Boy, Diana's gonna be sorry she missed that one. I'll bet she's gonna love to hear it, and you just *know* I'm gonna tell her all about it ..."

"Good, then you can tell her how you got a knuckle sandwich, too," Sheila interrupted, waving a delicate and decidedly non-threatening fist under Eric's nose. The preposterousness of her reply coupled with the small smile indicated that maybe she was finally coming out of her bad mood. Eric glanced over and caught the look that Hank was silently shooting at him at the same time, and grinned triumphantly. Oh, this topic was a treasure trove, that was for sure!

"Knuckle sandwich? Sounds tasty," was the Cavalier's chipper answer to Sheila's comment. "Is that kosher?"

"Kosher? Hm, I guess I can kill you humanely with it," Sheila replied, mock-thoughtfully as they finally arrived at their little house.

"Ooh, shakin' in my perfectly polished, designer boots!" Eric answered with an exaggerated expression of terror. They paused on the front stoop while Hank knocked and called Diana's name, letting her and Bobby know that it was friends who were about to come through the door.

It only took a few seconds for it to sink in that there was no reply from inside the house.

"Diana?" Hank called again, his sudden worry apparent in the pitch of his voice as he slammed his fist against the door more forcefully this time. "Bobby?"

Still, no answer.

The conversation of a moment ago forgotten, Sheila darted forward, pounding her own fist on the wooden door. "Bobby? Bobby! Are you in there? Answer me!"

"Dammit! Keys!" Hank cursed, quickly searching his small leather pouch for one of the two door keys they had found inside this house. Presto was quicker, he had already produced the other from his own belt pouch and was ramming the little piece of metal into the keyhole.

"Bobby!" Sheila shouted again, lunging for the door the moment it was open. Hank, his hands now both occupied with his drawn Bow, had to block her with his hip to keep her from unthinkingly charging into possible danger. "Hank! Let me through!" she demanded, trying to push her way past as Eric grabbed her arm to help keep her back. "If Bobby's in trouble-"

"Then whatever got him in trouble might still be in there," Hank reasoned grimly, not sparing a moment to glance at Sheila as he edged his way cautiously into the house, all senses on alert.

"So at least don't let them see you," Eric finished the thought simply. Though Presto was staying carefully behind the Cavalier's raised Shield, he didn't have as much luck keeping Sheila there. With a frustrated sound, the Thief pulled up her hood, disappeared, and quickly brushed past Hank and into the silent house.

A few steps in to the main room, it was clear that there was nobody there. At the same time, they noted the paltry belongings of the former owner that had been left here seemed undisturbed. There was no sign of a struggle, but no sign of Diana, Bobby, or Uni either. Everything was motionless and eerily silent.

"If anybody's here, come out and show yourself!" Hank shouted so abruptly that it made both Eric and Presto jump visibly.

"There's nobody here," came Sheila's worried voice, and the rest of her followed a moment later as she tossed back her hood and reappeared after a hurried search of the two smaller rooms.

Eric lowered his Shield in confusion. "Well, then, where-"

There was a muffled thump. The four of them flinched in unison, and all eyes turned quickly to the floor. That sound had come from somewhere beneath them.

Another thump, again under the floor. Then a slight scrape.

"The cellar!" Presto realized about half a second before the others. In a confused rush, they crossed the room and crowded around the trapdoor they had found built into the house's far corner. A small wooden ladder led to a plank-fortified shaft in the ground that had obviously been the root cellar when there was still food to be kept here.

"Diana!" Eric bellowed, not caring if anyone heard how concerned he was. "You in there?"

The trapdoor jiggled slightly. Then, it cracked open a few slight inches on silent, leather hinges. Diana's dark eyes peered out intently at them.

"Oh, man, I thought it sounded like you guys!" the Acrobat said with obvious relief, pushing the door open the rest of the way and scrambling up the ladder quickly. It was pitch black, dusty and stale in that cramped hole in the dirt, and she obviously couldn't wait to get as far away from it as she could. "We're okay. Come on, Bobby, coast is clear!"

"Okay!" came Bobby's answer, to the clear relief of Sheila. There was a scuffling sound from the open cellar, and some sort of sound from Uni, then the creak of a step on the ladder. Setting his Bow aside, Hank reached into the trapdoor and pulled out the badly shaken Unicorn, who Bobby handed up first, and then the little Barbarian popped out a moment later. "Dude, that was totally freaky," he said, sounding like he had almost enjoyed the spookiness down there.

"What happened to you guys?" Sheila asked, successfully preventing her little brother from dodging the relieved hug she wanted to give him. "Something must have made you hide down there."

It had been nothing more than a group of people, Diana explained, reiterating that she, Bobby, and Uni were all right. Maybe five or six individuals that she'd happened to glimpse out the window, roaming at the far end of the street when she'd spotted them. She admitted that no one had actually come into their house, as far as she could tell. But it was very obvious these people had been deliberately looking for something. Diana could see that much by the way they'd methodically gone up to each house on the street, looking in windows and trying doors. What she couldn't discern was whether they were searching specifically for a group of new arrivals in town who were rumored to be carrying a supply of food, or whether this just happened to be a gang looking for a random house to loot. She hadn't wanted to find out.

Hustling Bobby and Uni into their emergency bolt-hole, Diana had spent a precious few minutes gathering up or concealing anything that might have made the house look recently lived-in. Then, with the gang searching only a few houses away, she had scrambled into the cellar behind Bobby and carefully shut the trap door. The three of them held their collective breath in the pitch black hole, praying that the people would just peek in the windows, assume from its abandoned look that no one was in this house, and move on. There would be no concealing their hiding spot for long if someone decided to enter and investigate.

How long they had been down there was clearly subject to interpretation. Bobby figured it was "hours and hours," though Diana, creeped out as she was by the tomb-like cellar, more accurately guessed that they'd only gone down there about half an hour ago.

"So ... uh," Presto finally suggested sheepishly. "'S not like I want this to happen again, or anything. But howzabout I try to whip up some candles or a lamp or something so you can, you know, have a light down there next time?"

"That would be most appreciated," Diana answered dryly. Then she grimaced and gave a 'hmph' of mild frustration. "I was tearing around here so fast that I didn't have time to think. But I wish I could have gotten a better look at those people," she admitted. "One of them seemed awfully familiar. I thought maybe that Jakarth guy came back with friends, looking for Uni, but this was a big, tall guy. They were just too far down the street to get a good look."

"Y'know, I don't really think I want to find out who they were or what they wanted," Presto said, already taking up a post at the window, watching nervously down the street in case the group of strangers returned.

"Face it," Hank replied. "Chances are, they were looking for us and for something to eat. The way Diana says they were searching doesn't make me think they just wanted to talk like Baris and his friends. So that does it," he decided firmly. "No more carrying food around and no more using it to convince people to talk. These people are desperate, and after today, I think it's pretty clear we've just been inviting trouble. We're lucky we haven't brought anything worse on ourselves. Explain in a minute," he added when the expression on Diana's face clearly showed she was wondering just what had happened today that had been so bad.

"So what do we do if we want to get people to talk now?" Eric asked evenly. Now that he was assured everyone was alright, he could settle himself into the vaguely comfortable spot he had claimed by the cookstove and take a load off his aching feet. "I mean, I know we've gone off before with nothing more than a half-baked riddle from Ol' DM and still come out on top, but if we're gonna do this, then Presto's right, we need a whole lot more information than we have."

"Well then," Hank reasoned, "tonight we're just going to have to sit here until we figure out some other way of getting it."

**ooo**

They hadn't come up with anything.

Bribery, Eric decided as he crossed his arms on the windowsill and rested his chin there, had simultaneously been the worst idea and their best option. Yes, in hindsight he could see that toting bags of food around in a concentrated area of starvation put them in undeniable danger. They just hadn't comprehended, until now, the level of utter desperation here. And therein lay the problem. What else but the temptation of a full belly was there that would get these broken people to talk?

This wasn't the first sieged town that the fabled "Young Ones" had encountered in the Realm. It certainly wasn't the first prison camp they'd liberated. Eric had lost count of how many peoples they had freed in the course of their simple quest for a way home. The difference, though, was that in every other case, there had been a fighting spirit, a will of the people to survive.

Here, the dispirited people were ready to lay down and die. Eric really didn't understand it. Why, in a population of almost a thousand, had they found no more than four people who had any hope to live? No one else they'd encountered could be stirred with words of encouragement. No one was willing to rally to the cause of saving themselves. No one, at this point, seemed to have any hope that the curse could be broken. Deep down, they were all convinced they were going to die. They accepted it. Honestly, most of the people in this town were little more than the walking dead already. And that, the Cavalier decided with a flash of insight, was what Lord Tolan must have encountered in the aftermath of the Duke of Darkness's other curses, the horrific, undead things the nobleman had described as continuing to exist, but not really live, in the rotting shells of their homes and villages, endlessly stirring zombies seeking vainly to end their madness ...

_What was that?_ _Zombies? No, calm down, Montgomery, you idiot, there aren't any zombies in this town yet ... _

It was late. Very late. Probably one in the morning, Eric guessed, because he'd been on the second watch for about an hour now, and that shift usually started around their best guess at midnight. Zombies or not, one o'clock was too late for anyone to be out, especially since there was no commerce or farming to be done here.

So why were there two figures creeping around at the far end of the street?

The moons were nowhere near full tonight, and the figures carried no torches or lanterns of their own. It was lucky that Eric had seen them at all. In the darkness, it was hard to tell for sure, but the stealthy figures were large enough to both be men. And each of them seemed to be carrying something heavy.

From his post at the window, Eric felt his muscles coiling, preparing to spring into action and wake all his friends the moment these two mysterious silhouettes started moving this way. Unfortunately, those muscles soon began to cramp painfully because he ended up holding that tense position of readiness for far too long. The man-shaped shadows, he eventually realized in surprise, weren't coming this way at all. But then, what were they doing?

Relaxing a bit, and stretching out his calf to ease the worst cramp, Eric strained to see through the smothering darkness. No, the two figures definitely weren't interested in this end of the street at all. Good. Whatever they were doing, whatever they were being so sneaky about, their attention was focused entirely on the intersection of this street and its cross street. So what was down there that was important enough to get someone out of bed at this hour?

Calling up a little mental map of their sojourns in and out of this little neighborhood, Eric soon remembered that where the streets crossed, where the sun exposure was likely to be the best, the cobblestones had all been torn up and hauled away. The exposed dirt had been turned over and seeded with one of the many desperate, small-plot gardens they'd seen around the city.

_Probably just a nighttime raid on the garden,_ Eric decided as he watched the two men for a moment longer. _Too bad they won't find much, seems like that garden was all dried-up and withered like most of the gardens in this ... this ... huh?_

Okay, now that was strange. The men were in the garden, but they weren't raiding it at all. Eric stared in confusion as one of them upended the heavy object he was carrying. Something came pouring out of it, and the faint light of the three crescent moons, the flowing contents glimmered with fluid silver highlights.

It was a bucket. A bucket of water. The men were watering the garden. At one in the morning.

Weird.

As weird as watering a garden at this hour seemed, there was no mistake. Eric watched as the second man turned over the heavy object he carried, and it, too, turned out to be a bucket of water. And then, just as stealthily as they had appeared, the two figures disappeared into the shadows again.

A minute threatened to pass in the ensuing silence. Then another. Eric let them go. He only stared cautiously out the window for a while longer, until he convinced himself that the mysterious silhouettes weren't going to return. Then, fairly certain there was no immediate danger, the Cavalier quietly moved away from the window, carefully picking his way over to the kitchen counter. He fumbled there for a moment until he found one of the crooked candles that Presto had managed to conjure. Sparking it into flame with a flint and a knife, he shielded it with his hand so that the tiny light wouldn't be readily visible from the street.

Thus lighted, Eric made his way across the room, carefully stepping over the snoring Presto, until he found the spot of floor that Hank had claimed as his sleeping spot. "Hey, um ... Hank?" he whispered, trying not to wake everyone in the whole room, but then he stopped, and despite the situation, a wry expression crept onto his face as he rolled his eyes. It had happened again.

Every evening, Hank and Sheila regularly chose sleeping spots that were somewhat close to each other, but clearly spaced apart just enough for propriety's sake. They always went to sleep with at least an arm's length separating them. And somehow, every night as they slept, one of them would roll over, or one of them would wriggle a bit closer, until by morning, they were pressed together in one of those annoyingly cute little cuddles, just like they were now. And every morning, they'd wake up like this, look delightedly embarrassed about the whole scenario, and pretend that nobody else could have possibly noticed.

"Yeah, *sure* I can't believe that Collin guy thought you were married," Eric said to himself, but without any real rancor. Honestly, they didn't hide the fact that there was something between the two of them nearly as well as they thought they did. At least they made the effort to be discreet, so as long as that held true, Eric resolved not to have a real problem with it. Shrugging the whole thing off, he looked around the floor near Hank. "But right now, it's your other girlfriend I'm worried about," he added as he spotted the Bow, which the Ranger always kept in easy reach, even when he slept. Quietly sliding the Weapon several safe feet away, he knelt down and whispered, "Hank, dude, wake up," while shaking his friend's shoulder lightly.

"Huhwha?" Hank bolted upright and his hand shot out for his Bow before his eyes were completely open. It was exactly this reaction Eric had expected and prepared for.

"Sorry, didn't want to scare you into blowing a hole in the wall or anything," the Cavalier explained quietly as Hank groped in alarmed confusion for his missing Bow. He let a second or two pass before deeming that the Ranger was at least marginally aware of his surroundings now, and it was safe to hand the purloined Weapon back. "Don't panic. I moved it, 'cause you have some pretty crazy reflexes when you jerk awake like that," Eric explained, which finally earned him a stare of vague comprehension. "You *do* realize you do that, right?"

Hank was aware of his surroundings, true, but that didn't mean he was really awake enough to engage in Eric's banter at this ungodly hour. Rubbing his eyes, he perceived that nobody seemed alarmed or frightened, so there probably wasn't an emergency happening. "Izzit my turn for watch?" he asked, sleepily figuring that Eric must have had some important reason to wake him.

"Huh? No, not yet. Not for a couple hours," Eric admitted, which caused Hank to sigh deeply and then flop back down on the Presto-provided quilt they'd been using as a sleeping pad. If there was no crisis, no emergency, no changing of the guard, then there was no reason to be awake. Well then, he was not going to be awake, simple as that. The movement caused Sheila to murmur something unintelligible and stir restlessly.

"Go back t' sleep," Hank mumbled sleepily into Sheila's hair as he snuggled against the petite Thief, clearly forgetting they had an audience. The renewed physical contact seemed to reassure Sheila to the point that she had already drifted off to sleep again, so she probably didn't even hear him explain, "Eric jus' woke me up ..."

"Yeah," Eric whispered firmly, shaking Hank's shoulder again. This was getting ridiculous. "You maybe want to know the reason *why* I woke you up, oh Fearless Leader?"

"Better be a good one," Hank muttered darkly, and Eric had to marvel that even half-asleep, the Ranger's voice carried the definite threat of a wedgie if the answer wasn't convincing enough.

"Yeah, it's weird. I just saw some guys watering the garden down at the end of the street," Eric tried to explain, but he just got a drowsily exasperated snort in reply.

"Far as I know, you're s'posed t' water gardens," Hank reasoned thickly, clearly nodding off. He'd deal out the promised wedgie in the morning, if he even remembered by then. "Helps 'em ... helps 'em grow, and all ..."

"Yeah, but, dude, it's one in the freaking morning, in case you haven't noticed!" Eric insisted in a stage whisper.

Something about the comment, or the tone of Eric's voice when he said it, finally penetrated through the foggy veil of sleep and forced a little piece of Hank's brain to admit that yes, Eric was right. That was a little weird.

"Wait ... what?" Hank's eyes snapped open again, and this time, he looked much more alert and focused in the face of real, or at least possible, trouble. "You saw what, now?"

"Two guys. Pretty sure they were guys, anyway," Eric amended, rising to his feet as Hank got up as carefully as he could to not disturb the soundly sleeping Sheila. Both boys crossed the room quickly and looked out the window. Eric blew out the candle rather than let it shine where it might be visible from the street, and continued to explain quietly, "They were down there, where people tore up the road and planted a garden. Sneaking around really ... really sneaky-like. Each of them poured a bucket of water on the garden and then they snuck away."

Frowning, Hank stared out into the thick darkness, much the same way Eric had while standing watch. If there had been people out there even a few minutes ago, they weren't there now, as far as he could see. "Did you hear them say anything?" he asked quietly.

"No, too far away," Eric answered, also staring out the window. "Especially if they were whispering."

"Huh," Hank grunted noncommittally. A slight sound in the room made them both glance away from the window, worried that their talking had accidentally woken someone up. It was just Bobby, turning over in his sleep and getting comfortable again. They nodded to each other and lowered their voices another notch. No sense in waking anyone else up if there wasn't an urgent reason yet.

"Okay, I don't do a lot of gardening, so I don't know," Hank conceded quietly. "Is it good for plants to be watered at night?"

For a moment, Eric considered what he knew of the hours of care that went into his mother's prized rose garden. But only for a moment, otherwise that ever-present but carefully buried homesickness would become too painful to bear, and Eric knew he couldn't deal with that right now. "Actually, I think it can be kinda bad," he finally replied to Hank's question. "It can sometimes cause plant diseases, and, um, fungus and, and stuff. I think my mom's gardener said it has something to do with the water not drying up off the surface right away, 'cause there's, um, no sun to make it evaporate, and it might get all mucky, or something."

"What if the plants are all wilted and not producing much, like most of the gardens in this town?"

"Still better to water in the morning. Or maybe late afternoon. Either way, when there's sun, but when it's not too hot 'cause then the water will dry up too fast and the plants won't get any. Or somehow it burns the plants. I think. I'm not really sure."

Operating on the assumption that Eric was right, Hank mulled that over, wondering if gardeners in this part of the Realm were wise enough to have figured that out, or if they still believed that crop blights and diseases were the work of curses and evil spirits. No, considering the widespread farming operations they'd seen on the way to this town, one would have to assume that the farmers knew a little something about what they were doing. "So you're saying that there's no good reason that anyone should be watering the gardens at night?" he summarized.

"Not that I can think of. And I have a gut feeling those guys were being sneaky for a reason. They were up to something."

That settled it. Hank nodded solemnly. "Your gut's been right more times than not. Come on. Let's go have a look."

A few minutes later, the two of them were sneaking down the street, hugging the shadows of the small houses just as stealthy as the two men Eric had seen earlier. Neither of them could be spotted easily in the darkness, since Eric was not activating the glowing power of his Shield unless he needed to, and Hank had used a piece of cord to sling his Bow across his back, eschewing his bright arrows in favor of the Sword he had taken from the Dragon's Graveyard. Eric had also taken a chance and gone out barefoot, rather than risking his metal boots making any sound on the cobblestones.

"You sure they're gone?" Hank whispered, studying the street intently. The problem with the shadows that concealed them so well was that their darkness could just as easily have hidden someone else who had been watching the two of them this whole time. Or, as they failed to consider, shadows could conceal even more shadows, which studied them just as intently.

"Pretty sure. I saw them go," Eric replied softly, but was forced to add, "unless they doubled back when we weren't watching. Y'know, maybe we should have had Sheila do this. I mean, the Cloak and all."

"We're here, too late now," Hank answered quietly, sparing a glance beside him at the dark silhouette that was Eric. Then he did an abrupt double take. What the-? For a second there, he could have sworn that the Cavalier had something in his hand. It had almost looked like a knife, but no, now that he looked closer, he could see that it was just Eric's clenched fist. The sparse moonlight must have glinted off his metal gauntlet, or something.

"So, now what?" Eric asked, not noticing Hank's sudden scrutiny in the darkness. "I don't see anything that looks wrong with the garden from here."

"Well, we came to have a closer look," Hank reasoned. "So let's have a closer look."

Fairly confident that they were not being observed, but still cautious, Hank gripped the hilt of the Sword a little more tightly and quietly crept into the open space of the road. Eric was just a step behind him as they made their way closer to the little garden plot.

"Hey ... you smell that?" Eric asked softly when they were standing approximately where he judged the two figures to have been earlier. It was faint, but there was a definite tang to the air in this area.

"Yeah," Hank agreed in the same tone of voice, looking very confused. Something was very out of place here. "Smells like ... I don't know, the beach or something."

"Right here, this is right where they were," Eric somehow managed to shout and whisper at the same time, pointing down. He was sure it was the spot because his bare toes had just discovered a puddle of muddy water.

"Okay, then let's see what we can see," Hank said, squatting down until he was eye-level with one of the browning, blighted plants. He couldn't see much, of course, but after a moment's study, a sliver of faint moonlight reflected brightly enough on one of the plants to catch his attention. More precisely, it reflected in a few droplets of whatever the strange interlopers had poured on the garden. Beads of moisture were still clinging to the plant. "Here we go," Hank whispered with grim triumph, running his fingertips along the wet leaves to dampen them as much as possible.

"Dude, careful," Eric warned. "That might be pee or something."

"It isn't," Hank answered, frowning in concentration as he pondered the familiar scent and what it could possibly mean right here and now. "You can smell it. I think you know what it is."

"I know what I think it is," Eric corrected, crouching down to get a better sniff. Actually, he was pretty darned sure, yet the answer made no sense whatsoever. "Is it?" he asked as the Ranger daringly tasted just a drop or two from his finger.

"Yeah," Hank nodded, and spat carefully before rocking back on his heels to ponder what could possibly be going on here. There was no sense to it. Suddenly, this wasn't just about the Duke of Darkness's curse any more. The picture had gotten much bigger, and even less clear. "Salt. They were watering the garden with salt water."


	6. The Pieces Fit Together

_A thank you in this chapter goes to Tannhaeuser for letting me borrow the House of Mord, which was one of his contributions to the previously mentioned Circle of Power game._

**ooo**

**Dastirum**

Chapter 6: The Pieces Fit Together

**ooo**

"Salt?" asked an incredulous Sheila the next morning. "You've got to be kidding! Salt on a garden will kill all the plants! It's like the original weed killer!"

"You know that and I know that," Eric shrugged, staring into his bowl of breakfast, some sort of rough gruel that might have been the Hat's laughable attempt at Cream of Wheat. "Of course, some salt on this ... glop ... would perk it right up. And maybe a little brown sugar and– "

"Enough, already," Diana snapped. Unlike Eric, who'd had the time to ponder the garden mystery most of the night, she had only been told of this when she and the others had woken with the dawn. She reached for an apple, one of the other edible things the Hat had managed to cough up this morning. "We've got a real mystery on our hands here. Okay, so maybe we all know that salt will kill a garden. Question is, do the people here know it? Or, is something else going on here altogether? Let's think outside the box a sec. Maybe they think that the salt is going to break the Duke's curse somehow?"

"Everybody knows salt is bad for plants, unless you're talking about seaweed and stuff that grows in the ocean," Eric countered, gingerly tasting another spoonful of the gruel and deciding that, as far as things went, maybe it wasn't so bad after all. At least it was food, and better than his own cooking. Admittedly, that wasn't saying much. "Heck, even the ancient Romans knew it. They salted the fields of the people they conquered so they couldn't grow anything and would starve to death."

"Actually, everybody thinks that, but they didn't really," Presto interjected. Waving his spoon for emphasis, he explained, "They burned their enemies' fields and the crops but everyone thinks they used salt for some reason. Remember, salt was so valuable that the Romans used it for money. Salting fields would be just like throwing money on the ground. They wouldn't do that. Would you throw hundred dollar bills on the sidewalk and walk away? Besides, they'd need so much to salt a field that it would take each Roman soldier carrying, like, hundreds of pounds of salt each to have any real effect. They didn't have that much salt and couldn't have carried– "

"The point IS," Eric interrupted smoothly, "that any gardener worth his salt ..." he paused to bask in the collective groan his pun received, then quickly plunged ahead when he saw Presto open his mouth to explain the etymology of *that* expression, too, "is going to know that salt kills plants. That's something they figured out way back in the Brass Age. No, wait, I mean, Bronze. Bronze Age. Or maybe even before. Anyway, these guys here, the Realm, it's more like, what, the Middle Ages? So even these people would have figured it out centuries ago. Which means that those dudes were trying to kill the garden on purpose," he concluded with an expansive shrug, "and that makes no sense at all in a place where people are starving to death."

"And going back to my point," Diana countered as she went to the cookstove for more hot water, to steep a second cup of what she really hoped was tea from Presto's Hat, "is what if they thought they were doing something to break the curse? You know, like making a sacrifice or something. They don't have any animals left in this place, so the only thing they had to sacrifice was their vegetable gardens."

"Eric said they were being awful sneaky about it," Hank explained, wishing he'd been awake to witness for himself the two shadows stealing into the garden. "If it was something the people here thought they had to do, they wouldn't have been slinking around like that. It's like Eric said, call it a gut feeling that they were up to something bad." He pondered the situation thoughtfully for a moment, distractedly twirling a chewed apple core by its stem before tossing it to an appreciative Uni. "I can't put my finger on it any better than that. But I think we're dealing with more than just the Duke of Darkness now. Half the people we talked to said that the Duke's curse would make their crops wither and die. They're shriveling up, all right, but it looks like the reason for that is because we've got an inside job on our hands."

"And you're sure it was salt water?" Diana quizzed, still trying to get the big picture here. Something was tugging at her brain just a bit, a vague hint of ... of something. For the life of her, she couldn't figure out just what.

"Absolutely. I know what salt tastes like," the Ranger confirmed with a nod. "It wasn't super salty or anything, but it definitely was salt. Like they were just using enough to poison the garden slowly rather than kill it overnight. I don't know if it had anything else in it that I couldn't taste, but if it did, it couldn't have been too bad because I'm still here, alive and kicking." He smiled apologetically at the stern glare Sheila gave him for possibly risking his life like that.

"So," Bobby finally chimed in, after practically inhaling his entire bowl of hot cereal and then attempting to steal what was left of Eric's as well, "ya think they're putting salt on all the gardens in town, or just this one?"

"Good question, Bobby. Real good question," Hank answered thoughtfully, leaning back against the wall and trying to remember what he'd seen over the past two days. "Has anyone taken a good look at any of the gardens while we've been out and about?" he asked finally.

"Not specifically," Diana answered with a shake of her head.

"I remember thinking that most of them could really use my mom's gardener's help," Eric added. "But I just kind of glanced at them, we didn't go for a close look or anything."

"We didn't really look, either," Sheila reminded.

"Presto?" Hank asked.

"I mostly talked to people with Eric, then I went and looked at the gates," the Magician admitted. "I wasn't, you know, really paying attention to much else."

"Okay, then maybe that's what we need to do," Hank decided, collecting his and Sheila's breakfast utensils and depositing them in the small kitchen's leaky washbasin. "Let's pass on trying to get people to talk today, and go have a look around at the rest of the gardens they've planted instead. Somebody needs to stay here with Bobby and Uni ..."

"Aw, do I have to stay here AGAIN?" Bobby whined with practiced skill. He didn't think he could take one more day of being cooped up like this, in this dull, boring, uninteresting house. His brain was going to go numb if he wasn't able to get out soon. "There's nothing to do!"

"Meyaaaaa!" Uni agreed around a mouthful of apple. "Meyufffin ma nooo!"

"Sure there is," Hank answered smoothly. "You can wash the dishes, or clean the firebox, or ..."

"Aw, come on!"

" ... or you can search the rest of the house for more secret doors," Hank finished thoughtfully, ignoring the little Barbarian's interruption. "I mean, we found that one trapdoor to the cellar, but you never know, there might be more. We haven't really looked."

"Really? You think there might be more?" Bobby asked, the sudden, interested gleam in his eye telling them all that he'd been successfully distracted once again. Sheila gave Hank another look, one that was half glare of reprimand for fooling her little brother like that, and half gaze of admiration for being able to handle the precocious ten-year-old so easily. She said nothing.

"Never know until you check," Eric answered, also impressed enough with the charade that he felt obliged to pitch in and help. Few kids that age could resist a hunt for secret doors, hidden rooms, and, possibly, lost treasure. Bobby was no exception.

"Cool!" Bobby crowed, bouncing up from the floor and towing Uni along after him. "I'm gonna start in the bedroom, I'll bet there's another trapdoor under the bed!"

Hank, Sheila, Eric, and Diana had long since teamed up and left by the time Bobby figured out their little ruse.

**ooo**

"Master?"

"Where have you been?"

The irritated, demanding tone never failed to make Shadow Demon cringe internally, fearing another painful and inconvenient discorporation. The Boss was angry and moody ... and when was he not? Venger was surly even when his lackey brought good news, and this, certainly, was not good news. It contained two very important, key items that Venger most assuredly did *not* want to hear.

Still, as much as he dreaded passing on the news, hesitating would only cost Shadow Demon even more. He knew he had to come out with it, and quickly, if he valued his shadowy existence at all. "Master, I have been in Dastirum," he said carefully.

Venger's lip twitched. It might have been a sneer at the name. "Dastirum," he said in a surprisingly neutral tone. "In the Kingdom of Yarfell?"

"Y-yes, Master," Shadow Demon answered. The only thing that was going to be worse than saying he'd been in that hated kingdom would be explaining why.

"I have no interest in Yarfell or any of its protectorates," Venger snapped, turning his back on his servant and folding his wings carefully. In truth, it was a barely scabbed-over wound that Venger simply did not wish to discuss. He'd very nearly had Yarfell as his prize once. The lands and people of that wealthy kingdom had been within his grasp despite pockets of resistance, until three short years ago. How things had changed when the old King died and his daughter had taken the throne. Oh, if it had simply been the new Queen by herself, barely more than a teenager at the time, he should have been able to storm right in and take the kingdom without working up more than the barest effort. She was just Human, a slight little thing with barely any experience in command, and that command was challenged the moment she took the throne. Still grief-stricken over the death of her father, she faced severe opposition from the House of Mord, a treacherous noble family which had actively sought the Royal House of Yarfell's downfall for years.

Venger had expected Mord to do most of the work for him, and then he would step in and claim the spoils. But much to the Dark Lord's surprise, the young Queen was too clever by half. She had surrounded herself with power. At least one powerful, and annoyingly uncorruptible, Wizard named Echlar who was nearly a match for Venger's own power. A powerful order of divine priesthood. A powerful army. A powerful alliance with a dragon that watched over the entire kingdom at her behest - Venger had yet to figure out how she'd accomplished that. The Elves of the Forest of Yar were also her allies, and their light was a power Venger feared almost as much.

Lord Drax of House Mord, exposed for the traitor he was, had fallen under the blade of the Lord of House Halloran. Drax's younger brother Edellin, whose timid and bookish nature had labeled him a blood traitor to his own House, had neither the conviction nor the lust for power to follow Mord's treasonous and deadly footsteps. But even if he had been able, he'd been forever swayed from that path by something far less violent but far more treacherous: the irresistible charms of Halloran's headstrong and clever little sister. With that nest of traitors emptied, the Queen's power to protect her people was complete.

Venger had lost. Unfortunately for him, he learned all this the hard way. It was little wonder that Yarfell was such a sore subject.

"Of course, Master, I know full well that you have little interest in any part of Yarfell," Shadow Demon said in a cautiously apologetic tone. "However, it seems as though the Duke of Darkness has his own designs on at least part of it." That, Shadow Demon knew, was actually the least offensive bit of news he had to deliver.

"Ah, dear old Dubhar," Venger said with oily and patently false warmth for his one-time servant turned rebellious thorn in his side. "I care not if he wants Dastirum. Let him have it. He employs one of his extravagant curses on them, I take it?"

"So it would seem," agreed Shadow Demon, causing Venger to give a disturbingly wicked laugh. Though the Duke of Darkness was well known for the havoc he had wreaked on several small towns throughout the last decade or so, Venger had no fear of the type of curses his former lackey now employed.

"Predictable," Venger observed, waving off the entire topic, "and no concern of mine." He turned away, about to go back to his business when Shadow Demon, fighting every instinct that urged him to remain silent in the face of The Boss's apparent calm, blurted out the rest of his news.

"Master, the Young Ones ... they are in Dastirum. I have been tracking them. They arrived two days ago, and seek to save the town by breaking Dubhar's curse."

Venger froze. He took ten full seconds to digest the ramifications of this new information. Then, slowly, rage growing steadily in his glowing red eyes, he turned to face his servant once again. Those blasted children mentioned in the same breath as the hated Kingdom of Yarfell was intolerable enough. But to have that traitorous Dubhar involved was completely unacceptable. Like it or not, Venger now knew he would have to do something about it.

"I ... I believe the children are closer to figuring it out than they realize," Shadow Demon added, trying his hardest to not let it look like he was deliberately backing away from Venger's slow, angry advance. At the moment, he was very, very glad that he hadn't fanned the flames of his Master's ire any more by mentioning the particular nobleman of House Halloran who he had seen guiding the children to Dastirum in the first place.

"That," Venger spat, seething with hatred that rolled off him in hot, palpable waves, "will bring Dubhar down on their heads in all his precious 'Duke of Darkness' fury. I will not tolerate his interference, Shadow Demon!" Venger suddenly roared, as black wings made of death and midnight stretched to their full extent behind him. "He has no right! Return to Dastirum immediately," he ordered, instantly switching to such abrupt and total calm that Shadow Demon was convinced, once again, that he was dealing with a madman. "Inform me the instant those accursed children manage to attract Dubhar's pitiful attention."

**ooo**

Fifty heavy carts of Yarfellian make stood at the ready, each hitched to a pair of oxen or other beast of burden recognizable only in the Realm. Each cart was laden with burlap sacks of grain and hardy fruits and vegetables that grew in the bountiful fields of Yarfell Proper, or crates of herbs used in medicine, or pens of small livestock such as coneys and laying hens.

The last known population estimate of Dastirum was 1,200 people, and here was enough food to feed that many for a week. Possibly more, if some of the oxen were slaughtered at the end of the journey. Of course, the Queen of Yarfell had no way of knowing for sure that a quarter of Dastirum's citizens had already succumbed to starvation and disease, or fallen victim to the destructive force of the Duke of Darkness's curse. But, given the information that Lord Tolan had brought to her, she had her suspicions.

"Go forth, and may the Gods smile upon your journey," the Queen spoke to the relief caravan's leader, a devoted General who had served in her father's army since before she was born. "Send back whomsoever you can spare once you have delivered these supplies. More will be raised within the week, and We will need your faithful men to keep the lines moving."

"Aye, Your Highness," the General said with a formal bow. Then, climbing into his war horse's saddle, he waved his arm, which signaled the trumpeter to give a loud blast on his instrument. A jumble of organized chaos ensued, in which wagoners, both soldiers and citizens, said hurried goodbyes to their families and scrambled into the buckboard seats. Then came a short cacophony of flapping reins, shouts to the yoked and harnessed beasts, the creak of wheels and carts, and more trumpet blasts. The second wave of relief to Dastirum began its ponderous journey.

**ooo**

"I don't get it," Hank said as he and Sheila stared at the sixth garden they had found this morning. Like all the rest they'd seen so far, the plants were brown and withering, not far from being completely dead. "It's just like Eric said, those people must have been trying to kill the gardens on purpose. It's an inside job, all right. I just don't get why."

**ooo**

"Hey ... Diana?"

The Acrobat looked up from examining the dirt around the latest garden they were studying. There was a small clod in her hand that she was breaking up with her fingers, smelling the soil delicately. Dirt had a particular odor all its own, and it was usually a strong one. She wouldn't have been able to detect the whiff of salt over the dirt's own natural smell if she hadn't specifically known to, pardon the pun, sniff it out. But it was definitely there. "Yeah?" she asked, wondering why Eric looked quite as serious and pensive as he did at that moment. The garden, obviously, was the last thing on his mind right now.

Instead of responding right away, the Cavalier just stood there for a moment, his fist bunched under his chin, deeply distracted. "Something, something's been bugging me about those two guys I saw last night," he said, fidgeting slightly and staring off down the street as if he expected to see them again at any moment.

"Okay, what?" she prompted when Eric lapsed into thoughtful silence again.

"I dunno, exactly," he answered, catching the disparate thoughts running around in his brain and slapping them together in some haphazard order even as he spoke. "It's just, they seemed maybe kinda familiar, you know?"

"But I thought you said you didn't see them clearly, didn't you?" Diana asked, standing and wiping her hands carefully.

"No, it was dark," Eric agreed with a shake of his head, "It's just that ... okay, back up a sec. When you saw those people searching the houses yesterday, you said you didn't get a good look either, because they were too far down the street. But didn't you say you thought one of them kinda looked familiar, too?"

"One of them," Diana admitted slowly. And with that simple question, she, too, was no longer giving the garden even the slightest thought. A little ringing bell in her mind told her that Eric was on to something here, and she needed to pay close attention to whatever it was, if they had any chance of figuring out even the smallest part of this mystery.

"Big, tall guy, you thought?" the Cavalier asked after another long but thoughtful pause.

"Yeah," Diana started to answer, and then her eyes widened. A connection. Hadn't Eric described the previous night's shadows as giving him the impression they were both large men? "You ... you think the same people are involved," she reasoned. It wasn't a question.

"I'm thinking maybe so," Eric replied distractedly, putting his hands to his temples as if trying to force his thoughts to line up correctly. There was more to this, he just had to think ... "What ... um, what did Presto say about using that self-defense move you taught him, on the guy that freaked out on him yesterday? That he was surprised it would work on someone twice his size?"

"Yeah. Someone twice his size," Diana echoed faintly. She saw just where Eric was going with this. Even if the Magician exaggerated just a bit, someone 'twice his size' would still imply it was a fairly large man who had accosted him the day before. "Big guys, every time. Huh. You know," she reasoned, "most the people here are thin as rails because they're starving. So maybe our saboteurs have a secret stash of food or something. And it shouldn't be too hard to find them, now that we know what we're looking for. Big, beefy guys will stick out like a sore thumb in this place ... what?"

Eric's jaw dropped in dawning realization, and just for a fleeting second, Diana found herself impulsively wondering what would happen if a fly buzzed into his mouth. "Oh. Oh, no. No, no, nonononono, you have got to be kidding me," he muttered, the words instantly letting Diana know he was on the verge of a revelation. She practically launched herself at him to grab his shoulders urgently.

"WHAT!" the Acrobat demanded forcefully.

"Di," Eric finally said, his voice dropping low as some of the puzzle pieces fell into place. Only a small corner of the whole picture was now formed, and it was not at all what he was expecting. Not even thinking to remove Diana's hands, even though her gripping fingers were slowly sinking into his arms through his chain mail, he explained, "We've already found them. We even talked to them. We looked them right in the eye and never realized who they were. You remember, day before yesterday, you and me, we were talking to a couple big guys who went totally ballistic on us because they figured we were all going to die and we weren't doing anything but stirring up trouble? One of them threw a major tantrum, but do you remember, in all that yelling he did, I swear he said their shop had enough salt to make the best bacon between here and somewhere else."

Diana's hands dropped of their own accord, falling limply to her sides in shock. Eric was right. Neither of them thought much of it at the time, preferring to just get out of the way of the man's show of grief and rage, but Diana clearly remembered the bacon comment. "Salt. Big gunny sacks of salt. We even saw them with our own eyes. Come on," she said, after taking a moment to gather her slightly stunned and scattered wits. "I've seen enough gardens for one morning. I think maybe we should go check out the butcher shop next."

**ooo**

Scrape. Scrape. Scrape.

Glumly, Presto stared but didn't really see the furrows he was carving into the windowsill with his mysterious knife. He'd volunteered to stay behind with Bobby today, because despite all his assurances yesterday, he was beginning to believe their approach to all this was pointless. True, the mystery of the garden salters might offer a new perspective, but if he were being honest with himself, he'd have to admit he was completely out of ideas and just didn't want anyone else to know it. Going out and trying to find more clues again, and probably coming up empty handed (again), would just make him feel even more inadequate than he felt now.

Scrape. Scrape. Gouge. Scrape.

At least Bobby was halfway entertained at the moment. Trying to get the Barbarian to calm down out of the fit he'd thrown upon realizing he'd been tricked, Presto had picked a couple chunks of mostly-burned wood out of the cookstove and shown Bobby how to draw with charcoal. Unfortunately, there was no paper to be had, so Bobby was now freely drawing all over the house's walls with the injunction to just "not draw anything that will make your sister kill us both."

Scrape. Gouge. Carve.

Another thing that Presto didn't want to admit was how much he hated that his friends expected him to be able to break the curse. He hated that he knew he was going to let them down yet again. Yes, he'd broken a curse once before, but his magic only went so far. He'd read a spellbook then, and had a very clear idea of how the curse had released ... no. Be honest here: how *he* had released the dragons on Helix. He'd had something to work with then. Now, he didn't even have a clue.

_Should have stayed with Varla._

Scrape. Scrape. Sigh.

Ceasing his wholesale damage of the innocent windowsill, Presto lifted his knife to the sun and studied the polished surface of the blade. He hadn't figured out what this thing did, either. Just what kind of a Magician was he, anyway?

A strange thought occurred to Presto then. Some time ago, he had decided there was no such thing as a coincidence. Not for him and his friends, anyway. Not here in the Realm. The silliest, most inconsequential things they ran across usually ended up saving the day, like that little flower that Diana had given Sir John. Maybe this was the same kind of thing. What if he'd found this knife for a reason? Maybe it was a clue, like so many other random and seemingly unconnected things that ended up applying directly to the predicament of the day. If only he could figure out what ...

_You are a Magician, a Wizard_, he remembered Lord Tolan telling him as they made their way to the Forest of Yar. _You, of all your friends, should be better attuned to magic than most. How does this knife feel to you?_

"Okay, I'll give it a try," Presto muttered to himself. Checking to make sure that Bobby was suitably occupied, ("Uh, oh, maybe I shouldn't have let him draw on the walls after all ...") Presto picked a spot on the floor, then sat cross-legged, adjusting his robes around him. Once he was comfortable, he took a few deep breaths, trying to clear his mind. He actually wasn't sure of the technique, but he knew from all those sci-fi/fantasy movies and TV shows he used to watch that a clear mind and a calm center was essential to properly working this kind of magic.

_Clear your mind ... clear your mind ... clear your mind ... just like those monks ... now you understand, Grasshopper ... clear your mind ... clear your mind ... and now it's time for a commercial break ..._

_Crap._

Shaking his head, Presto chided himself for letting his mind wander, took a few deep breaths, closed his eyes, and tried again.

He got it right on the third try, managing to shut out the sensation of his feet going to sleep and, almost to his surprise, entering a state of mind where he could concentrate on the knife alone.

_Yes, the knife is magic, _the objective part of his brain informed him as he sat, unmoving, the knife carefully balanced across both open palms. He reached out with as open a mind as he could manage, trying not to allow any expectations or preconceived ideas to float into his thoughts, in case they subconsciously influenced what he sensed._ I can feel it, there's definitely some sort of magic here. It's not powerful ... no ... wait, maybe it wasn't powerful at first, but ... weird, it seems like it's getting stronger. Its power is growing ... it's growing more ... and it's making me feel ... wait ... why's it doing this? I can feel it, but it almost feels like it's pulling me into it ... I'm not sure what kind of magic this is but I can definitely feel it sucking energy right out of my fingers ... _

Presto's eyes popped open abruptly. He'd lost his concentration before he figured the knife out, but his attempt at detecting its magic had been working. He just needed a second to catch his breath, find his calm center, and try again. He was certain he could do it ...

No.

In a flash of insight, Presto understood. Sure, the knife had some special power he hadn't figured out yet, but that wasn't the reason he'd found it. Not at all. It wasn't the piece of the puzzle that would tell him how to break the curse, but there had been no coincidence that the mysterious weapon had come into his possession. He almost laughed at how simple it was. The knife was there to make him realize just what he was capable of doing.

_If I can detect the magic in this knife,_ he thought with growing confidence,_ then why the heck can't I just go try to detect what kind of magic is cursing the town's walls?_

Gathering himself up, fueled with excitement at having a plan of action, Presto tucked the knife into his sash and went into the next room to find his current charge. "Hey, Bobby?" he asked. "Um, listen, I need to go out for a few minutes, 'kay?"

"Can I go too?" Bobby asked immediately, perking up and tossing the charcoal aside in favor of his ever-present Club.

"Um, only if you want to leave Uni here all defenseless and alone," the Magician answered. Okay, so it wasn't quite as smooth and subtle as Hank's easy manipulation of the kid, but it had the desired effect. Bobby's face fell.

"No, I guess not," the Barbarian muttered, looking down and kicking at an imaginary rock.

"Okay, good," Presto nodded, trying to sound encouraging. It wasn't all that long ago that he himself was the little kid that always got left behind when the older kids got to do something fun, and he remembered how much it could hurt. "I don't think I'll be gone too long. So just keep an eye out, and if you see anything like you guys saw yesterday, then, um, do like you guys did yesterday and get in the cellar, 'kay?"

"'Kay," Bobby mumbled, disheartened.

"Oh, and one more thing before I go, Rembrandt," Presto added, pointing to a particular charcoal sketch on the wall. "Get a wet rag right now and erase *that* before your sister sees it."

**ooo**

Dastirum's butcher shop was easy enough to find, and Eric and Diana easily retraced their steps to it from their brief visit, two days ago. Of course, there were no customers going in and out of the storefront. Like every other shop in this starving town, there were no wares left to display and sell, no business to conduct. That meant, as far as Diana and Eric could tell, that the movement they glimpsed through the small building's greasy windows had to be someone who lived there in the back room, namely, the butcher and/or his assistant.

For the second time in less than twelve hours, Eric found himself realizing that Sheila was much better suited for the job he was attempting right now. With her Cloak, she could have walked right up and eavesdropped through the window, or even waited until someone opened the front door and then snuck inside to hear better. But Sheila and her Cloak weren't here at the moment. Instead, it was just the perfectly visible pair of them, and as much as they needed to get whatever information they could, they wouldn't take the chance of standing under the open window to listen. Both knew it ran too much of a risk of either being heard, seen, or worst of all, having a chamber pot dumped out the window on their heads.

Doing the next best thing that they could think to do, the two of them turned back the way they came. Walking with their heads down and exuding as much depressed resignation as they could manage, they hoped they blended in and looked like any of the other defeated townsfolk despite the almost cheerful appearance of Eric's bright finery. In this way, they did not draw too much attention as they looped around, cut between a couple abandoned stores, and came up directly behind the butcher shop.

Catching Diana's eye, Eric placed a finger to his lips and then gestured them forward with a quick jerk of his head. Diana nodded, though neither the shushing nor the direction had been necessary. As softly as they could, the two of them crept up to the back wall of the building. Eric placed his left ear against the wooden siding while Diana placed her right, so that not only were they facing each other, but were able to watch each other's back in case someone caught them in their act of espionage.

Diana wished for a water glass; the old childhood trick of using one to hear through walls would come in handy right now. But the fact that people in this part of the Realm hadn't learned to construct buildings with anything resembling insulation worked equally well in their favor. All they had to listen through was one layer of wood that didn't seem all that tightly assembled. Sounds from inside, only slightly muffled, came to their ears almost immediately.

Movement. That's all they heard at first. Then, a little more movement, unidentifiable. A chair scraping. Was that ... was that the sound of dishes rattling? Diana frowned, and Eric raised an eyebrow. Dishes implied that the occupants had food, so Diana had been right. The residents of this particular building weren't starving. The large men had stayed large for a reason.

Several long, agonizing, and silent minutes passed. In all the heart-pounding suspense, both eavesdroppers forgot to breathe at one time or another.

A voice, then, which the two of them strained to hear, but it was too muffled. They were listening to whatever was happening in the back room, and it seemed that the speaker must have been in the front shop space. Eric grimaced in frustration.

Another sound. A rushing, splashing sound, followed by a couple small clinks and clanks. Water pouring into a basin or bucket, Diana decided. Whoever had been eating was now washing his dishes. The sound drowned out many of the words, but finally, they were able to catch a definitely male voice.

"You think-" _Splash. Clink. Splash._ "-ared them off by now?"

An unintelligible reply. At first, anyway. Now it seemed that the other speaker was getting closer, maybe entering the back room as he spoke. Eric and Diana both froze, not daring to press their ears any closer in the off chance that it would make the wood siding creak loudly enough to give them away.

_Mumble, mumble, mumble, _"-many of them are there, anyway?"

"Five, I think," was the answer, which was the clearest thing the two amateur spies had heard so far. "There was the two what came in here, was the two yesterday what we got those people to gang up on and steal their food, then there was the one what I chased away from the gate, thinks he's a Magician or something."

Diana's eyes widened instantly, and she stared at Eric, wondering if he had come to the same conclusion. In the space of a few seconds, they had just learned three very important things. One, that thankfully nobody seemed aware of Bobby and especially Uni's presence here; two, that the butcher and his brother - assuming it was them they heard talking - were indeed up to no good; and three, they'd been involved in both Hank and Sheila's mugging incident and Presto's fright at the gate, which meant they were up to even less good, if that was possible.

Something else was said inside the building. It wasn't quite clear, but sounded something like, "What do you think we should do?" or possibly, "What did you put in this goo?"

It turned out to be the former.

"Well, I ain't–" _something inaudible, _"- all him yet. We just gotta make sure them kids give it up-" _another chair scraping loudly on the floor, _"-fore they figure it out."

Figure what out? The curse? What about the curse? Figure out how to break it? Diana tried not to fidget, knowing they were so close to finding out what was going on, but also wondering at their good fortune and how long it was going to last. They were never this lucky. The good guys just walking up and overhearing all the clues to the bad guys' plans only ever happened in the movies.

"What if they do?" one of the voices inside the building asked.

"Then we call him," was the answer.

Call him? Call who? How? Confused, Diana silently mouthed the words, "Duke of Darkness?" at the Cavalier, who merely shrugged. Eric had not formed an opinion yet. Right now, all his focus was on memorizing the words, like it was when Dungeon Master spoke to them. He wasn't thinking too hard about what they meant. Analysis would come later.

_Thump. Clunk. _"-think he'll do with them?"

"Y'know how he likes to make examples o' troublemakers. He'll prolly kill 'em."

Neither eavesdropper flinched at that. Death threats towards their little group were so common that they hardly felt any concern about them any more. In fact, whenever they fell below two death threats a week, Diana would comment that life in the Realm was getting a bit boring.

"Hey, you think maybe he'll let-" _clatter,_ "-the girls?"

Diana frowned. So did Eric. This, on the other hand, was territory they did not like so well.

"If he does, I get the pretty one."

_Slam_. "No, I–" _stomping footsteps, a voice raised until it garbled a bit,_ "-so I get the pretty one!"

"Oh yeah? Well, I said it first, so I get ... the ..." Sudden silence. Eric strained harder, trying to hear even the slightest noise inside, while Diana considered just walking away in disgust. Were they whispering? No, the Cavalier realized after a moment, there was simply nothing being said. Did this mean they had been discovered, and the two in the building were signaling each other in some way other than with words? He tensed, getting ready to run, but then he realized that the two speakers inside the building had just paused for a confused second, and remained completely oblivious to their two eavesdroppers. "Um," he thought he heard the first speaker finally say. "Which one d'you think is the pretty one? I mean, they're both kinda ..."

"Whichever one you think is pretty! That's the one I want!" the other voice snapped._ Slam._

It was all Diana could do to keep from snorting in derision, and Eric had to bite his tongue to remind himself to concentrate, and not laugh. Whoever these men were, they certainly fought like siblings, including what sounded like a heated, "Shut up, no YOU shut up!" exchange.

Neither the Acrobat nor the Cavalier were quite sure if the argument they were listening to actually got resolved somehow, or whether the two arguers just ran out of steam. Whatever the reason, the yelling subsided, and they were left straining to hear once again as the two men inside resumed talking in normal voices as they went about their business.

The next words were difficult to comprehend, and were followed by a weighty _Thud_ on the floor. One of the men was moving something heavy in short bursts, and straining to speak at the same time. All that was intelligible was, "-don't count your dra-" _Thud_, "-fore they hatch." A word that sounded like _Doobar_, "is prolly just gonna kill 'em all." _Thud_._ More words that were too strained to be clear._ "-zample. Can't have nobody running round, saying they gonna-" _Thud_. _Footsteps_. "Specially if they do figure it out. Don't wanna think what would happen then."

The answer was too muffled to understand a single word. The footsteps they'd heard must have been one of the speakers moving into the front part of the shop, where it was harder to hear him. Whatever he'd said, the reply was, "Yeah, either that or we call him now." Another _Thud_, this one with the finality of the heavy object being deposited firmly in its place. "But I don't want to piss him off if there ain't no need yet." Another string of mumbled sounds from the front room earned the response of, "Yeah, yeah, I'm coming." _Footsteps. _

The sound of a door opening alerted the eavesdroppers that the occupants of the building were leaving. They both froze for a panicked moment, trying to decide whether to run or to hide.

Staying put and hiding was the better option. They were behind the building, after all, and the men were leaving from the front. If they just kept quiet, maybe their unusual streak of luck would continue. Diana gestured for Eric to crouch down, as quietly as possible, and to keep a low profile, while she risked taking a quick peek around the side of the building.

There they were. She drew her head back after just that one glance, but she'd seen enough. Yes, the men walking away from the shop were the butcher and his assistant to whom they'd spoken on their first day here. Both of them big, tall men, just like she remembered. Just like one of the men she'd seen searching the street. Just like the shadows Eric had seen salting the garden.

"Well, let's thank our lucky stars," Diana whispered after she'd counted to one hundred, giving the men plenty of time to get down the street and turn the corner. "They're gone. I dunno for sure, but I think it sounded like they were going looking for all of us. Lucky they never figured they could find us just by looking right behind them." She waited for Eric to nod in grim agreement before adding, "Now let's get out of here before someone else sees us and wonders what we're up to."

**ooo**

This time, Presto played it smart. Rather than risk another assault by someone thinking he was trying to leave the town, the Magician simply avoided the main gate altogether. The entrance faced north, therefore he went to the south part of the town. The smell of rot was much more pronounced on this end of Dastirum, and much to his surprise, he found a smaller but equally disused gate there, too. Of course, he realized after a moment, it was simply smart to have a second exit in case a fire or other disaster blocked the main gates. Nevertheless, judging by the fact that people were still trapped here, starving and dying, it was obvious that no one could go out the town's back door, either.

Not wanting to cause any sort of scene today, he moved on, circling clockwise, until he was faced with a large stretch of solid wall in an area that felt fairly deserted. It was a good thing that he didn't decide to circle the walls in the other direction. He would have found the source of the stench that had been plaguing them since they arrived: the mass grave where Dastirum had been burying her dead for the past five months.

This part of the town was mostly destroyed, so naturally the Magician didn't see a single passer-by, but he didn't want to chance it. He wandered around a bit until he found what he deemed to be the perfect secluded spot to work some magic. This portion of the wall was mostly blocked from view by the remains of a blasted and half-burned building.

Finding a suitable piece of rubble, Presto dusted it off with his sleeve. He sat, facing the wall, and made himself as comfortable as possible, which wasn't much considering he was sitting on rough and broken masonry. A pebble he'd missed started digging in to his rear. He ignored it.

_Concentrate_, he told himself. _Just relax, and concentrate. Clear your mind. Find your calm center. Relax. Concentrate. Concentrate. Hurry it up a bit. Concentrate. Relax. I like pizza. Concentrate. Come on, you haven't got all day ... _

Crap again. Another near-meditative state lost to a wandering mind. Finding the right state of mind was harder than Presto thought. Maybe he should ask Dungeon Master for some Zen lessons or something. If they ever got out of this place, that is.

_Well, if we stand a chance of getting out of here, I won't find it by sitting around moping. Okay, try it again. Concentrate. Think of the wall. That's all I need to concentrate on. The wall. Concentrate, relax, focus on nothing but what the wall feels like ... _

It took even longer to find a calm, clear center than it had when he'd been experimenting with the knife, but after several minutes, Presto finally reached the state of tuning out all distractions and filling his awareness with nothing but the town's high wall. He was breathing calmly and regularly, with impressions of wood filling all his senses. He could see every crack, grain, and splinter in the wall, smell the slightly musty scent of old, weathered oak. Each tiny creak and groan of the towering wooden slats in the prairie wind amplified itself ten times in his ears.

Rising without being aware of what he was doing, the Magician moved several paces forward, his hands reaching out and fingertips coming in contact with the rough wood. His senses were in a state of hyper-awareness, and his focus on every tiny aspect of the wall, and nothing but the wall, was complete. Whatever curse the Duke of Darkness had laid here, Presto had, of his own skill, reached the point that he knew he should be able to feel its power.

_I see the texture of the wood, I hear the sounds it makes, I smell the odor it gives off, I feel the magic running through it, I feel the essence of the curse the Duke has laid upon this wood ... _

_I feel ... _

_I feel ...?_

_I feel it's not working. Crap._

Refusing to slip out of the state he had worked so hard to achieve, Presto shut his eyes to block out any possibility of distraction, and pushed himself even harder into his state of concentration. Perhaps it was a bit of a cliché to say that he was trying to become one with the wall, but that was exactly what he was doing.

_I should feel it now. I should ... wait, I think it's working. Yes, it's be working now. Isn't it? Give it time, don't rush ... I feel ... _

_I feel ... _

_I ... _

And suddenly, Presto knew. He understood now, and it shocked him. He knew exactly what the Duke of Darkness had done, though he had no idea how anyone could have pulled off such a risky maneuver. Shaking his head to clear it, he stumbled backwards a few steps, staring dumbly at the top of the wall that loomed twenty feet over his head as he tried to comprehend his discovery.

"Oh, my God ..." was all he could think to say.

He turned and ran to find the others.

**ooo**

"I don't think we got quite what we wanted out of that," Diana commented when she and Eric judged they were a safe enough distance away, in the opposite direction from the way the butchers went. "But I'm pretty sure I heard some important stuff, anyway."

"Heck, yeah," Eric agreed, leaning against the twisted form of some sort of post whose purpose was no longer identifiable. "And not just what they said. I heard dishes rattling, which definitely proves they have their own food supply. Pretty good for a couple guys who told us all the goods were looted out of their shop months ago."

"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" the Acrobat mused, staring back down the street from where they had just come.

"I dunno. I guess that kinda depends on what you're thinking, doesn't it?"

"I'm thinking they must have some sort of contact on the outside," she reasoned. "Someone who's sneaking supplies in for them. The curse doesn't stop anything from coming in, after all. They've got help, like this is some kind of conspiracy. Is that what you're thinking?"

"Pretty much. Only, the way I'm thinking it involves more swear words. Y'know," he added thoughtfully, "we should go get Sheila. Now that they're busy looking for us, it's the perfect time to have her go in and search their place."

"Not a bad idea," Diana admitted. "And maybe if she has a good look around, she can figure out what they meant about this 'call him' business. They must have something, some, I don't know, amulet or crystal ball or whatever, that lets them get in contact with someone, probably the same someone who's keeping them supplied. And I'm guessing that someone is the Duke of Darkness."

"Ya think?" Eric asked with a heavy dose of his trademark sarcasm. "What I got out of that was that they're trying to scare some group of people who sound remarkably like us, so that this group gives up trying to figure something out. And if they fail at that, they have to call in some person with an idiot name like Doobar to kill said group before they figure this mystery thing out. Lo and behold, here we are, trying to figure out how to break the curse that the Duke of Darkness put on this place, and double lo and behold, those two guys have managed to throw all sorts of monkey wrenches in our way since we got here even if we didn't realize it at first. One and one makes two, Di. I'd bet my entire trust fund that those low-down, creepy, lecherous traitors are working for him."

Diana almost smiled at the offense Eric took over the vaguely lascivious plans for the girls that the butchers had been discussing. She never expected herself to be in the position of needing a Knight in Shining Armor to defend her honor and virtue, but it was nice to know he cared. "And is it safe to assume this Doobar guy and the Duke of Darkness are one and the same?" she asked.

Eric agreed. "I'd be willing to bet my little brother's trust fund on that one, too."

"Well, his money's safe, because it's no bet," Diana answered, gesturing for Eric to follow her. Just to be on the safe side, it was probably a good idea to keep moving. It was obvious to Eric and Diana that the Duke of Darkness had two people in this town who were secretly working for him. What they didn't know is whether he had more than just those two. "Damn, that was one hell of an act they put on for us the day before yesterday," she admitted, realizing how skillfully the two men's display of desperation had tarnished her psyche. "I just wish we could have figured out why they're working with the Duke in the first place, and what salting the gardens has to do with it. I thought the curse was supposed to be what's killing the crops."

"Maybe he exaggerated?" Eric suggested with a shrug. "You know, kind of like, 'Oops, I got carried away back there, now I have to hire some people to make it look like what I said is really happening so I don't look stupid because my big bad curse ain't all it's cracked up to be.' I dunno. Maybe we should go find the others and EEEYAAAARGH!"

At the shout, Diana dropped into a defensive stance, Staff extended, even before Eric had finished stumbling backwards and dropping onto his rear. Then, seeing just what it was that had startled the Cavalier so badly, she sighed, retracted her Staff, and slipped it back into its normal place in her belt. "Dungeon Master," she acknowledged, not quite able to say that she was glad to see their guide because she was too busy trying to convince her heart rate to slow down to some semblance of normal. "You know, I can't think of one single time where it's actually helped the situation when you appear out of the blue like that."

"No, perhaps not," the enigmatic figure agreed as Diana offered a hand to help Eric back to his feet. "I shall endeavor to be less startling in the future."

"Well, thanks," Eric muttered unappreciatively. Diana gave a good tug to haul Eric to his feet, but either she was a little too enthusiastic in her pulling, or else he wasn't quite ready. The Cavalier popped up, overbalanced, and crashed squarely into her. Both of them very nearly went right back down on the ground.

"Hey, careful! Watch it! Watch the hands!" Diana exclaimed, her natural speed and grace the only thing that saved them both from becoming a tangled pile of bruised dignities. She pushed Eric away, not quite hard enough to trip him again, and gave him a magnificent scowl.

"Sorry, sorry, it was an accident!" Eric protested, finally getting his feet under him. Dusting off the back of his cape, he continued, "So, anyway, now that you're here, DM, ol' buddy, we were wondering if you could maybe give us a hint about ... what the-?"

Dungeon Master was already gone.

"Where did he go?" Eric demanded with deepening confusion, turning in a circle and looking high and low. No way Dungeon Master could be gone, just like that! No message? No irritating riddle? No words of complete and utter ridiculousness that would somehow make perfect sense in hindsight? That wasn't Dungeon Master's style. Sometimes, the diminutive figure was known to disappear and then immediately reappear in another spot to continue his annoying mysteriousness without missing a beat, which Eric hoped was the case now. But he was nowhere to be found.

"Yeah ..." Diana echoed, a look of intense concentration creasing her features as she stared at the spot that Dungeon Master had vacated. It couldn't be. "Where *did* he go ...?" The wheels in her mind were turning quickly as new possibilities occurred to her, perspectives they had not yet considered. Hadn't Eric himself just said ...?

"I mean, you gotta be kidding me!" Eric continued, almost not hearing Diana at all as his rant built up momentum. Flinging his arms up in frustration, he demanded, "He scared the daylights out of us and then left? Just like that? Didn't even give us a blasted clue? Not even a-"

"No, he did! He did give us a clue!" Diana finally exclaimed, which stopped Eric in mid-tirade.

"Huh? He did?" Eric asked blankly, then started looking around on the ground where Dungeon Master had been, as if the clue he'd left was a physical item. There was nothing. "All right, I give up. What?"

"He appeared," Diana explained, pointing at the spot of his appearance for emphasis, "and then he disappeared!"

"Well, yeah he ..." Eric began, then stopped. When he wasn't so ticked off that he was mindlessly ranting about something, the Cavalier did have a functioning brain in his head and was able to think things through with some degree of logic. And now, he began to see what Diana had seen. "He ... left? Like he's not here any more? In this town? What about the curse ...?" Eric reasoned, then brightened. "He teleported! That's it! He teleported out of here because that's not actually crossing the town walls or passing through the gate or whatever! Of course that wouldn't invoke the curse! Omigod, Diana! You're right, that's a huge clue! Remember the Duke's Sphere thingy? The thing he can teleport wherever he wants to with? That's what we have to do! I'll bet that if we can get it from him, we can teleport everyone out of this place and then we can use it to go home! Come on!" he shouted, dashing off in the general direction of their pre-arranged rendezvous point. "We've got to go find the others!"

"Eric! Wait! Hang on a sec!" Diana shouted ineffectively, running after the retreating figure of the Cavalier and trying unsuccessfully to grab his cape to slow him down. She needed him to listen for a moment, to hear out her thoughts on the matter, but there was no stopping him in his excitement. True, it was an interesting conclusion he'd made, but it wasn't the one Diana had arrived at, not at all.

**ooo**

The rendezvous point was not the town square this time. Having been attacked there once was more than enough, so Hank had decided that when it came time to discuss what they had discovered in this morning's investigations, they would meet at the town's north well.

The well, which was still working and had not filled with blood under the Duke's curse, as some of the townspeople suggested might happen, was on the opposite end of the cobbled lane as the town square. In fact, the plaza was quite visible from the well, but it was disconnected enough that Hank didn't think they'd be accosted by anyone lying in wait for them today.

The biggest of the four suns was directly overhead, so that made it some time around noon, their agreed-upon meeting time. It was hard to tell time more precisely than that, but Hank and Sheila expected Eric and Diana to be showing up any minute now. They themselves had arrived a little early, wanting to answer a question about the town's water supply which had come up as they'd made the rounds of the dying gardens.

"Nope," Hank confirmed, drying his hand on his leggings after sampling the water they had drawn from the well. It was exactly as they'd suspected all along. "Not the least bit salty. Kinda tastes a little like sulfur, but a lot of well water tastes like that. Other than that, it's as fresh as tap water back home."

"Meaning there's no doubt the guys who were pouring salt water on the gardens had to mix it up in their buckets on purpose," Sheila continued, shaking her head in bafflement. During their time here, the gang's drinking water supply had mainly come from an accidental flood Presto had triggered while creating his experimental potion supplies. It didn't seem likely that the groundwater here was salty, but until they'd tried it for themselves, they had no way to be sure it wasn't a case of the Dastirites being so used to drinking salt water that they never realized how bad the well was.

"Which brings us back to the original question: why?" Hank added, sitting down on the lip of the well which had miraculously withstood the repeated disasters that befell the town. He patted the stone next to him, earning a brief smile from Sheila as she moved to sit there, leaning against him comfortably as he slipped an arm around her waist. "I can only figure that those guys have to be working for the Duke of Darkness," he continued, "or at least they support him and *want* him to take this place. It's like they're making sure that his curse does everything he said it would do, and maybe then some."

"Or else he's mind-controlling them in to doing it," Sheila hazarded. "Wouldn't that be a nasty thing to do? Force people to destroy themselves by poisoning their own food supply?"

"That's evil," Hank agreed. "That's Venger-level evil. But I think the answer's probably a lot simpler than that. If he can mind-control people into poisoning their own food supply, why not just mind-control them into surrendering?"

That was a good point. Sheila tried to think up some other possibilities, ones that were easier for her to fathom than Hank's conviction that the men were sabotaging their town of their own free will. "Maybe they've been blackmailed?" she suggested after a moment.

"Blackmailed into killing themselves like this?" Hank pondered dubiously. "Maybe. I mean, I know that I've been blackmailed into doing some pretty bad stuff," he acknowledged, never letting himself forget the horrible position Venger had forced him into, and the soul-crushing reactions of Sheila and the others when circumstances led them to believe he'd betrayed them all and possibly even killed Bobby. It had been one of the darkest points in his life. "But eventually I figured out that there had to be a better way than just caving in. There comes a point when you just can't do what the blackmailer wants any more. What could the Duke possibly be holding over their heads that would be worth killing themselves and all of their neighbors? It makes more sense to me that they must be working for him, not being mind-controlled or blackmailed into it. I mean, it's always possible, but I'm gonna guess it's more likely that they've got something to gain from him taking over. And even that doesn't make sense. Why would he need some moles, or operatives, whatever you call them, when he's got this place totally hemmed in by his curse?"

"Well, the Duke cursed this place because he wants it to surrender," Sheila guessed, feeling like she was trying to solve a story problem that was missing one key element. How could anyone find the answer without the right clues? "Maybe those guys were planted here to stir up trouble and damage things to make the people even more miserable, so they'd surrender faster."

"That makes sense," Hank agreed, giving his little Thief an encouraging squeeze. "I suppose even the Duke of Darkness would get kind of put out if he had to wait forever. But that still begs the question why he needs anyone to go about manually doing the things his curse is supposed to do. Unless the curse isn't as ... uh, oh," he interrupted himself uneasily.

"What?" Sheila demanded immediately, the tone of his voice instantly putting her nerves on edge. Sitting quickly upright, she followed his hardening gaze down the street, even as she reached for her hood and prepared to disappear. What was it? Another mob of people coming in the desperate hope of taking more food from them?

Then, she saw what had caught his attention. Pigeons, about a dozen of them, obliviously fluttering down from the sky to land in the town square, just like the other birds had yesterday.

"Don't look," Hank began, but Sheila was well ahead of him. She knew what this meant, and her tender heart just couldn't bear to watch again. Quickly turning away from the slaughter that was about to happen, she pressed her face against the Ranger's chest and covered her ears with her hands. Both his arms wrapped tightly around her to pull her close, and she was grateful for this quiet understanding, the emotional shield he was able to provide. She felt, rather than heard, him tell her, "Keep your eyes closed!" and knew from the way he tensed as he said it that the townspeople were already gruesomely slaughtering the unsuspecting birds with their crude weapons.

Suddenly, Hank stiffened with a sharp jerk and an audible gasp, and Sheila could literally feel the alarm shooting through him as his grip tightened enough to nearly crush the breath out of her. Her own level of fear jumped accordingly. Something had scared him badly, something that had to be much worse than the slaughter of a dozen pigeons."Hank, what ...?" she managed, keeping her eyes hidden.

"Hold on! Just hold on!" he told her sharply, shifting her in his arms so that Sheila realized he was trying to physically protect her from something awful. Not knowing what was happening, and too afraid to look and find out, the fear and adrenaline caused her to tremble violently. It terrified her even more to realize that she was not the only one shaking. Hank only ever let it show that he was scared when it was something *big.*

"What ... what is it?" she tried to ask, but her voice shook so much that the words were almost unrecognizable.

"Just hold on to me!" he answered with a clear note of panic in his voice. "The pigeons, one of the pigeons, it ... it ..."

He lapsed into silence.

And then, Sheila felt another change come over Hank. Though his whole body was still obviously stressed, gone was the tense, piano-wire anticipation of disaster. She could feel his heart hammering in his chest, but the alarm of a moment ago was giving way to something else entirely. When he finally relaxed his crushing, protective embrace enough to allow Sheila to breathe again and then look up at his face, she gleaned from his expression that he had gone from utter fear to complete bewilderment in a matter of moments.

He frowned intensely at something in the distance for a long and silent moment before muttering, "Wait a minute ..." to no one in particular. Sheila risked a glance down the cobblestone lane, but other than the fight over the slaughtered pigeons, she could not fathom what he was looking at or thinking so hard about. There was nothing bewildering about starving people fighting over food.

"Hank?" the Thief prompted, wondering if he was so deep in thought that he wasn't even able to hear her. "What just happened?"

That was when Sheila saw some terrible realization strike. Much of the color in Hank's face drained abruptly, and his bright blue eyes suddenly shone with equal parts of triumphant understanding and absolute shock. "Hank?" she asked, her voice rising in pitch with each syllable, "what is it?"

"Oh, my God ..." was the only thing he managed to say.

**ooo**

"Eric!" Diana shouted yet again. "Wait! Will you slow down already?"

"We're almost there!" Eric huffed, and Diana felt a little smug to realize he was out of breath. Well, that's what he got for trying to outrun one of the natural athletes of the bunch while wearing all that heavy chain mail. "Wait 'til they realize ... we can teleport ... out of here! All we ... have to do ... is get that ... stupid Unicorn ... to test it!"

"But Eric!" Diana called as she jogged along lightly behind the Cavalier, not even slightly winded. "I don't think that's it at all!"

"There they are!" Eric wheezed, clearly not paying the slightest bit of attention to Diana's protests. "Guys! Guys!" he gasped, skidding to a halt near the well where their friends were waiting. "I think I got it!" he babbled, not noticing that Hank wasn't even looking at him and Sheila was looking very, very confused. "Dungeon Master! He was here! He teleported in! And then he teleported out! That's how we can get around the curse! Teleporting! It's not crossing through the gate or over the walls so it won't cause the curse to ..."

"ERIC!" Diana shouted, finally able to grab his wildly gesticulating arm and shake it to get his attention. "Will you listen for a sec? I keep telling you, that's NOT what Dungeon Master was trying to tell us!"

"Huh?" Eric asked blankly, looking at Diana like it was the first time he noticed her there. "It's not? I mean, he didn't say anything else ..."

"No, but you did!" Diana argued. They had at least some of Sheila's baffled attention now, but for some reason, Hank was still staring silently up at the sky with a look of pure disbelief on his face. "You said that maybe the Duke's curse wasn't all it was cracked up to be!"

"I wha ...?" Eric asked, trying to shift his mental gears and remember when he'd said that. Before he had time to recall, or wonder what Diana thought it meant here and now, Presto came hurtling out of nowhere and onto the scene. He barely managed to hold his Hat on his head, and his flapping robes threatened to tangle around his ankles. Wildly disheveled, he looked like he'd just run at top speed across the entire breadth of this town, which, in fact, he had.

"There you are! I've been looking all over for you guys! You're not gonna believe this!" the Magician blurted, waving his frantically arms and sounding even more exited than Eric had a moment ago.

"Presto!" Sheila yelped, latching on to the Magician's sleeve. Though some sort of nearby disaster had apparently been averted, she had no idea what had happened and even less of an idea was going on in the rest of the town. Why was Presto here in such a frenzy? And why was he alone? "Why aren't you with Bobby?"

"I went to the wall on the south end of town," the Magician jabbered, which may or may not have been an answer to Sheila's question. Practically stumbling over his own words in his excitement, he managed to blurt out without noticeable pause for breath, "'Cause of my knife! You know, the knife I found in the Dragon's Graveyard? Well, Lord Tolan told me to try to feel if it had any magic in it, and so I tried and realized I could, so I figured if I can detect magic in the knife then maybe I could, you know, feel what kind of curse the Duke put on this place and so I went to the wall in back of the town and tried to detect the magic that the curse would have to have if it was as powerful as it seemed, and you'll never believe what I found!"

"You found absolutely nothing," Hank answered quietly, never taking his eyes off whatever it was in the sky that he found so interesting.

Presto suddenly looked like a balloon that just had all its air let out. "Huh? I mean, well, um, yeah," he agreed lamely, which nonetheless earned a surprised start from Eric, but simply a knowing nod from Diana. Sheila was dumbfounded enough by this revelation that, for just a moment, she actually forgot about her concern for Bobby.

"What are you talking about?" the Thief demanded, glancing sharply between Presto and Hank. "What do you mean, there's noth-" And then, she stopped in mid-word. With remarkable clarity, she suddenly understood. She hadn't seen it happen, of course. She'd been looking away when the townspeople slaughtered the small flock of pigeons, but now she knew what had alarmed Hank so badly, and what was about the sky that was so shockingly captivating. She turned to follow his gaze quickly. "Oh," was all she thought to say.

"That's what I was trying to tell you," Diana explained for Eric's benefit. "You're right. We could teleport out of this place. We could also pole-vault out of here, or, if you really wanted to, we could probably even walk right out the front door and go our merry way. You tipped me off yourself when you said that maybe the Duke's curse isn't all it's cracked up to be, Eric. That's because it isn't. It's why Dungeon Master could appear and disappear like that. It's why those guys are running around salting the gardens. They've go to do something to make it look like the curse is working, because I don't think there *is* a curse."

"There ... isn't?" Eric asked, so completely taken aback that he didn't comprehend that he'd been right, in a way, and just never realized it. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty darned sure," Hank answered, pointing up to the sky, where a small black dot was winging quickly away from the town. One of the pigeons had narrowly escaped the townspeople's attack. Unnoticed in the subsequent fight over its fellows' carcasses, and only noticed by Hank when it was too late to grab his Bow and blast it out of the sky, the bird had frantically flown to safety over and away from the town's high walls. It was after that long and terrified moment of expecting the curse-induced lightning and earthquakes to ravage the town, that the Ranger finally realized that absolutely nothing had befallen either the escapee or Dastirum. The curse, in this case at least, had amounted to nothing. "Or, if there is a curse," he added as the others stared off into the sky with dawning comprehension, "somebody forgot to tell the pigeons."


	7. To Test A Theory

_Dedication: A special thank-you in this chapter goes out to my dearest friend, the Rev. M. D. B. McDonald, a.k.a. Pickibytch. The incident in "Mr. Sullivan's" class that Diana and Sheila refer to actually happened to her in high school, and served as a major inspiration for this story. Of course, the names have been changed to protect the guilty. _

**ooo**

**Dastirum**

Chapter 7: To Test A Theory

**ooo**

"This is crazy! There's no way he could have pulled it off!" Not quite shouting out his confusion, Eric paced the main room of their little house, trying to make sense of the seemingly senseless. Despite having been the first to suggest that the Duke's curse wasn't nearly what everyone thought it was, he hadn't been entirely serious when he said it, and was now having a hard time accepting the possibility as real. "There has to be a curse! What else could have blasted the town like this and killed all those people who tried to leave, and made everybody on the outside who tried to help just up and disappear?"

"Something other than a curse," Presto countered. Whatever was ultimately happening here had him just as confused at Eric, but the Magician was, at least, completely certain of his findings. "I couldn't find any magic around the walls. If that's where a curse was at some point, it's not there now."

"How can you tell?" Eric asked. He was, admittedly, almost completely in the dark about the inner workings of magic. "I thought you said your Hat's been acting a little dead lately."

"I didn't use my Hat," Presto countered. "I just, kinda ... felt it, I guess. Or ... or I guess I didn't feel it. That's how I know."

"And you're sure about that?" the Cavalier asked sharply. "No offense, buddy, but you've been wrong before."

"Whether he is or not," Hank interrupted before Presto could reply, "I know what I saw. And you know what you saw. Now, if it was just a case of Dungeon Master alone, then yeah, I'd agree that maybe he was able to get around the curse and not cause any damage by teleporting out of here. But I'm telling you, that pigeon flew right out of the city and nothing happened. If the curse worked like we were told it would, it should have blown that bird out of midair, and then caused an earthquake or fireballs raining from the sky or something. But it didn't."

"Maybe 'cause it was a bird and not a person?" Bobby suggested. He'd been busily sulking all afternoon, since the moment Presto stepped out, and had prepared a fine list of complaints about his complete and utter boredom for when his sister and the others returned. To his surprise and interest, they'd come back in such an excited state, with such amazing news, that all his gripes were now quite forgotten.

"No, the curse is s'posed to go after any living thing bigger than a bug," Presto reminded. "Remember what that Jakarth guy said about the hunting dog that ran out of the gates and got blown to kingdom come?"

"Well, there you go," Eric said with a theatrical flourish toward the Magician. "There must be dozens of people in this town who saw someone or something try to leave, and get blasted to bits for it. This stuff is real, guys. People died because *something* killed them. If it's not the work of a curse, then what exactly is it?"

"That's exactly the question," Hank said calmly. "Okay, how about we start with the obvious. Maybe there *was* a curse at one point, but either it wore off, or, I dunno, maybe expired, or someone broke it and didn't realize it, and it's just not there any more. Can we all agree that's one possibility?" He waited for a round of nods, reluctant or otherwise, before continuing, "Now, can anybody think of a way that the Duke might have done all this *without* placing any sort of magical booby-trap in the first place?"

A few seconds of uneasy silence passed, interrupted only by the sound of Eric drumming his fingers on the rim of the washbasin thoughtfully. Finally, Sheila ventured, "Maybe it's all a big illusion or something? We've, um, seen that before, you know," she added with a sympathetic look towards Presto.

"No, it's like Eric said, the fireballs and stuff were real enough to kill people," Diana began, then abruptly sat upright from where she'd been leaning against the wall. A proverbial lightbulb had almost visibly switched on over her head. While everyone else discussed the mass destruction that happened whenever someone tried to leave, her thoughts had lingered on the butcher and his brother, and whatever their role was in this charade. They'd been going to the effort of salting the gardens to make everyone in the town believe the theoretically nonexistent curse was working. Could the Duke himself have done something similar, only on a larger scale? "What if he, if he ... faked it somehow?" she ventured, then, seeing the varying levels of confusion and curiosity in her friends' expressions, she tried to explain her rapidly forming thoughts. "Maybe there isn't a curse, but he made everybody believe there was," she suggested. "You know, like when you're playing poker and you have a lousy hand? You can still win if you bluff everybody into thinking you have a better hand than you do, by raising everyone's bets and tossing chips in the pot like you know you're going to win. Maybe that's what he's doing. Everything that Jakarth told us the Duke said and did, and the guys killing the gardens with salt, what if it's all a nothing but a really big show to convince people the Duke's more powerful than he really is?"

"Whoo, that's chutzpah for you," Eric muttered, shaking his head in disbelief.

"I'll say," Hank agreed. "Okay, Presto, does that seem like a way someone could pull it off?"

"Huh?" Presto asked blankly. "I mean, why are you asking me?"

"Because even if it isn't a curse like we thought it was, it looks like magic is involved anyway," the Ranger explained. "The fireballs are a dead giveaway. That's why I'm asking you, Mister Magician. It's pretty much your area of expertise. So what do you think?"

"Um ... I think what you said the first time was right," the Magician in question hedged uncertainly. "That there was a curse at one point, but it wore off and nobody realized it. It could have, like, been broken for a long time now and no one would have any way of knowing."

"Okay. Duly noted. And what if Diana was right, that it was all just a big, elaborate bluff?"

"I dunno," Presto admitted with a rising level of frustration. Sitting down on the floor with his back against the wall, he propped his elbows on his knees and rested his head in his hands, pondering the mystery as hard as he could. "Just let me think a minute, okay?"

*Could* a person do it? Presto was pretty sure he couldn't pull off such an elaborate ruse like that at all. Effects of a curse or not, fireballs and lightning and earthquakes were some pretty serious magic. He'd have to be more powerful, or at least more reliable, than he was now, if he wanted to conjure up anything that destructive.

Then again, the question wasn't really if Presto could do it, but could the Duke of Darkness? The biggest wildcard in Diana's hypothetical poker bluff was the Duke's level of magical ability. They didn't know for sure, but if the man had been cursing -- or conquering, maybe that was a better word -- cities and towns and lands for roughly the past decade, he must have some store of power at his beck and call. So for the sake of the argument raging in Presto's head, he decided that even if the Duke couldn't place a long-standing curse, he was perfectly capable of casting fireballs as needed, and calling down the lightning and splitting the ground with a quake.

Now the question became, if he wanted to convince the people of Dastirum there was a curse that trapped them in their town, could a Wizard do it with just a bunch of fireballs and such? Well, maybe. A lot of people wouldn't know the difference between a curse and a simple spell. Presto wasn't even sure if he himself would know the difference just on sight. Trying to think like an evil Wizard bent on conquering a city by hook or by crook, Presto figured that kind of ignorance was something he could use to his advantage, especially if he paired it up with some serious scare tactics. If he had the inclination -- which he didn't, but this was all hypothetical here -- he figured that first, he'd have to get everyone's complete and utter attention. If what the townspeople had told them was true, then that's exactly what the Duke had done with his dramatic entrance.

The Duke's next step, while he held everyone's attention, was to feed them a list of horrible consequences if they disobeyed his orders and tried to defy him. Presto decided that was probably the next move he would have made, too. His threats would have all been an act, but the townspeople would have no way of knowing the difference. Still, threats only went so far. If this was all a big bluff like Diana figured, the trick would be convincing people that the curse was real. How would he do that?

More specifically, how would an evil Wizard bent on conquest pull it off if with only fireballs and earthquakes? As Dungeon Master had told them, the Duke of Darkness had no force of arms to back him up.

This was the tricky part, and Presto had to think hard on it before he realized what he would do. Once he'd delivered his threats, the Magician decided, he'd find a nice hiding spot, watch the gate, and then fry anyone who tried to leave, or anyone on the outside trying to send aid. Blast enough people, cause enough earthquakes, and pretty soon, people would be convinced of the curse's validity because they would think they'd seen the proof with their own eyes. That was it, then. After only a few gruesome deaths, the survivors would be too afraid to risk the curse further.

Diana was right. It really was like recklessly throwing chips in the pot to convince everyone you had a better hand than you did. All it took to pull it off was a really good poker face.

Come to think of it, Sheila was right, too. It wasn't that different from what Varla was forced to do, now, was it? There was never anything wrong with her village. There was plenty of food beneath her illusion of desolation. Nothing had been destroyed. But her parents and everyone else had reached the depths of despair because they were fooled into thinking it was all real. So they'd already seen firsthand that a bluff of the magnitude Diana suggested could indeed be accomplished.

That was how Presto would do it if he could. Probably. He told his friends so.

"Okay, maybe I'm wrong here," Eric began, either purposely playing the Devil's Advocate, or honestly refusing to believe what he was hearing, "but I'm pretty sure that Jakarth said that people were trying to leave and getting blown up and fried and whatever for *weeks* after the Duke did his thing. Are you saying he camped somewhere in a field out there and waited for a whole month or more for people to leave so he could blast them when he saw them?"

"Depends on how bad he wanted people to believe him," Presto responded.

"But you're saying he's not out there now?"

"Look, I don't know!" Presto snapped, nearly at wits' end. "I have no idea what the Duke of Darkness did. You guys just asked me if I thought it could be done, and if *I* was gonna do it, that's how I'd do it!"

"Actually, Presto's probably onto something," Diana interrupted before a real argument erupted. "I bet the Duke isn't even out there at all. From what we've all seen, people completely believe him at this point, so he doesn't have to be so hyper-vigilant any more. He might not be watching at all right now. Otherwise you'd think he would have done something when that pigeon escaped. And let's not forget the two guys we were listening to, Eric. What we heard makes me think they're here to keep tabs on things for him so he doesn't have to all the time. Like they're the Duke's eyes and ears on the inside."

"Well," Eric agreed slowly, "we did hear them say they were thinking about calling somebody to come take care of us if we caused any more problems."

"Then it sounds like spying on the town is exactly what they're doing," Hank nodded, relieved that everyone seemed to be on the same page at the moment. After what Eric and Diana had described overhearing, nobody doubted for a second that those two men were in the Duke's back pocket. "Diana's right, the Duke can't be out there watching the gates and the walls every minute for five or six months, that's not possible. He's got to sleep sometime. But spies on the inside are in the perfect spot, and there's two of them that we know of, maybe more. More sets of eyes and ears makes it that much easier to watch over things. If they get wind of someone thinking about leaving, they call him, somehow, and he can show up right away with that teleportation Sphere of his, and blast away and do the earthquake thing to make it look like there's still a curse. Then in between times, they go around pouring salt on the gardens until everyone believes that part of the curse is real, too."

"So they're working for him. We already figured that. Your point is ...?" Eric prompted once he'd lost track of whatever it was the Ranger was driving at.

"My point is," Hank answered reasonably, "if it wasn't for those guys calling the Duke every time someone suggests trying to leave, it's probably perfectly safe to walk out of this town. I think that maybe as far as everyone here thinks, the curse is in full effect and they don't know it's just because a couple of their neighbors sold them out for whatever reason." Shaking his head, grudgingly admitting the Duke had indeed pulled off a major psychological coup, the Ranger neatly summarized Presto's working theory. "People are naturally afraid of getting killed, and what this whole thing probably comes down to is that nobody's tried to leave because nobody believes they can."

"That's stupid!" Bobby chimed in then. Despite having been sitting right there on the floor to hear the entire conversation, not a word of it had registered in any way he could understand. Almost all the subtleties of the concept of bluffing were, not surprisingly, completely lost on the young Barbarian. "You think somebody woulda figured it out by now!"

"Meeyaaah! Meeerer eeeh aaauuuhhh mmy maao!" Uni echoed immediately, before stopping and looking for all the world like she was wondering if, indeed, she would have figured it out or not.

"I don't believe I'm about to say this," Eric added, "but I think I agree with the squirt and the Unicorn. I can't believe all these people would be stuck here, dying and starving and everything, just because they *thought* they were stuck here."

"You know, Eric," Diana mused, relaxing a bit and leaning back against the wall as she grew more and more convinced that her idea was correct, "actually, it's not as crazy as you'd think." Turning to Sheila, she asked, "You remember that time, um, I was in eighth grade, I think, so you would have been in seventh. Mr. Sullivan's math class?"

"W-what?" Sheila stammered, instantly blushing bright red and, strangely enough, glancing at Hank with pure embarrassment in her eyes before looking away quickly. Squirming, and studiously avoiding Diana's gaze as well, she managed, "You, you mean that time I ... I was passing you a note, and he caught us and ... and ... read the note in front of everybody?"

"Oh, gosh no! I didn't mean that!" Diana exclaimed, immediately clapping her hands over her mouth in chagrin. She'd momentarily forgotten about that particular occasion, though at the time, both girls could have died of humiliation. The Acrobat's cheeks were obviously getting a little hot as well, and suddenly she, too, was inexplicably unable to look their leader in the eye.

Hank hadn't heard this particular story before, but judging by the girls' reactions, he had a perfectly clear idea who and what this legendary note was about. And, if the wicked smirk on his face was any indication, so did Eric.

Their glares locked. Eric grinned smugly like the smarmy kid who had just been given the most awesome birthday present ever. Hank narrowed his eyes mock-threateningly and dared him to use it. Neither of them said a word in this entire exchange. They didn't need to.

"I meant," Diana said firmly, getting a grip on the topic and dragging it back into safer waters. Still blushing, she was completely unaware of the glaring contest that was going on over her head. "The time we showed up for class and Mr. Sullivan wasn't there yet. A couple of kids were standing there outside the door, waiting for him to get there and unlock it. So we stood there and waited. And then more people showed up, and we all stood there, and waited, and waited, and waited. Remember?"

"Um, yeah," the red-cheeked redhead agreed, sounding a little subdued. It wasn't quite as memorable an event as the note-passing, but she recalled the incident well enough to see exactly what Diana was driving at. "It was first period, first thing in the morning, and it was kind of a foggy day and we were all standing there in the cold, being miserable."

"Right," Diana continued, remembering how much she'd regretted being too cool to wear a jacket to school. "And when Mr. Sullivan finally showed up, he walked right up, opened the door, and looked at us like we were all crazy for standing out there freezing when the classroom was unlocked the whole time."

"What, you mean nobody checked the knob?" Presto asked. He feigned a little surprise only to prompt the moral of the story, because he knew that in the same situation, he would never go up and rattle a doorknob to see if it was locked when other people were standing nearby, either. He never had any illusions about how much of a dork he was. Most of his school days were spent valiantly going out of his way to not look like an even bigger dork than nature had already endowed him to be.

"I guess we figured the guys who were already there had checked it, so we didn't try," Sheila admitted, which proved to Presto that it wasn't just the dorks who didn't want to look like fools in front of other people. "And everyone who got there after us figured we'd checked it. I'm not sure why the first people there didn't try the doorknob to begin with."

"I don't know, maybe they just figured the door was always locked when the teacher wasn't there," Diana guessed. "But do you guys get the point? Everybody was so convinced the door was locked that it never occurred to anyone that maybe it wasn't. I sure felt like a doofus, but from that day on, I always check any door that I think is locked, and I don't care how many people are watching."

"So what it comes down to is that we need to go check the gates ourselves," Hank concluded for everyone. "Maybe they really aren't locked down by a curse despite what everyone seems to think, and we can just walk right out of here. The difference between this and your classroom is we have to make darned sure that nobody at all is watching us when we do it."

**ooo**

The best time to test the theory, the gang had decided, was as late at night as they could reasonably manage. At this time of the month, the moons were still barely more than the thinnest crescents in the sky, so the darkness would conceal most of their actions. It also increased the chances that the butchers, and any other spies the Duke hypothetically had in this town, would be asleep.

Starting at the end of the street where the butcher shop was situated, the gang had formed a long, winding chain of lookout posts all the way to the town square where it faced the open gates. Presto, almost completely invisible in the darkness behind one barely-standing wall of an otherwise destroyed building, watched the shop for any sign that the butchers might be awake and moving around at this hour. If the men left their living quarters in the back of their shop to go salt another garden, or if it seemed like something had tipped them off and they were calling the Duke, he would turn and wave his opened Hat. The glow of its yellow interior was a bit weak, but it was enough to be the beacon that would alert Diana, who was stationed at the far end of the next street. Upon seeing the signal, she would duck behind the Tailor's Guild and briefly extend her Staff. The soft, green glow as the Weapon activated would easily be seen in the dark by Hank. He, in turn, would briefly draw an arrow at his own watch post, and so on down the line. It was a simple system that could ingeniously transmit a silent warning across almost the entire breadth of the town in a matter of seconds. Every single one of them was hoping they wouldn't have to use it.

On the southmost edge of the town square, crouched under the leafy branches of an overgrown shrub, Hank blended almost completely into the shadows as he alternated scanning the length of the plaza and casting edgy glances in the direction of the upturned, abandoned produce cart near the left side of the gates, which was Eric's post. Ready to test their theory, they were only waiting for the signal. None of them were going to make a move until they were absolutely certain they were not being watched.

A branch rustled slightly, and Hank felt something touch his shoulder. "Clear," a feminine voice whispered in his ear.

That was the signal. Sheila had taken almost half an hour, invisible and silent, to investigate every conceivable spot where someone might have been lurking, watching, ready to blast their experiment into oblivion. He nodded, though in the darkness, Sheila probably couldn't see it. Then, focusing on the other side of the town square, he gave a low, trilling whistle, the call of some elaborately plumed, Realmish night bird that he'd learned to mimic for just such an occasion.

Behind the pile of ripped-up cobblestones near the right side of the gate, which had been carted here to make room for the failing gardens, Bobby heard the signal to proceed, and turned to pat Uni's head. "Okay, girl, coast is clear," he whispered. Despite being utterly relieved and excited to be out of that boring house, the young Barbarian was taking this excursion completely seriously. His sister had impressed upon him all the things that could happen if they were caught, or worse, if they were wrong. "You ready?"

"Meyaaah," Uni answered with a low sound that was more of a murmur than a bleat. Putting her head down, she closed her eyes, snorted a few deep breaths, then concentrated harder than she had ever done before.

Five seconds later, barely visible in the faint moonlight, the silhouette of a small, pale animal appeared out of nowhere. It could be seen for only a moment before it huddled quickly under the sheltering stalks of corn in the fields surrounding the town. But that brief sighting said it all. Uni had successfully teleported out of Dastirum.

Nothing happened. No fireballs, no earthquakes. Inside the walls, the crumbling town slept as silently as ever, unaware of the magnitude of what was happening. Eric's original theory had just been proven. Teleportation would get them out of the city unharmed.

Despite the urge to leap into the air with a triumphant shout, Bobby bit his tongue and told himself over and over again that he had to be quiet. They weren't done here, and he certainly wasn't going to be the one to give them away. But Uni had done it! That would teach Eric to never say she was useless again!

When she was finally convinced that she hadn't been seen by unfriendly eyes, Uni quickly galloped back into the city. Aware of their need for silence, she ducked behind the rubble pile as gingerly as possible so her hooves would not make any noise on the flagstones. "Good job, girl!" Bobby praised her as quietly as he could in his excitement. "Good distance, too! I'll bet that's the farthest you've ever teleported!"

"She made it," Hank whispered, and while it was a relief to know the town was indeed escapable, he almost dreaded the next test of the so-called curse's validity. Their operating theory was that the people who died while trying to leave would have been safe if no one had noticed their attempts. To that end, Sheila was going to walk through the gate while Cloaked and invisible. If they were right, if there really was no curse, if nobody could see her leaving, then nothing would happen.

If they were wrong, and there was a curse after all ...

It was absolutely the worst time to start second-guessing, but Hank had to admit that they weren't one hundred percent certain they were right. The possibility of what would happen if they were wrong made his stomach tie itself in knots. But they had to know. They *had* to be right.

The invisible little hand was still on his shoulder. He took it in his own hand and squeezed, wishing there was some other way to test this than sending Sheila straight into the heart of the danger. His voice coming dangerously close to breaking with concern, he whispered, "Be careful out there, Pigeon."

Tipping her hood back briefly, Sheila became just visible enough to let Hank see her smile in the gentle, violet glow of her Cloak. "Love you, too," she whispered before disappearing again. It took every ounce of willpower he possessed to simply release her hand and let her go.

The wait brought a long, nerve-wracking silence. Even the people who knew Sheila was there couldn't see where she was, and could only guess at her progress. That simple state of not knowing made the suspense all the more unbearable.

Long seconds passed as they waited for Sheila to signal her safe return from this excursion. Yet the time ticked by and the signal never came. Where was she? She'd had plenty of time to cross the town square by now. Had she even gone through the gates yet?

More than a minute stretched past, and Sheila had not reappeared. What was she waiting for? Had she lost her nerve and was standing there in indecision, not even having left the town yet? Had something gone wrong? Hank fought off a strange wave of dizziness before realizing that he'd been holding his breath from the suspense of not knowing.

Bobby's head was barely visible above the pile of rubble as he looked for his sister. As wrapped up as he was in pride over Uni's accomplishment, he nonetheless knew Sheila should have made it out and back by now.

Why hadn't she? Was there a curse after all, and its tragic results had been as invisible as its victim? They'd never know if something happened to Sheila while she was Cloaked. They'd never be able to find her.

Another minute ticked by. Eric shifted uneasily behind the produce cart, silently cursing the darkness and Sheila's Cloak, both of which left him unable to see what was going on. Why wasn't she back yet?

An eternity of waiting passed in just a few more moments. Gripping his knees so hard that his fingernails were digging though his leggings, Hank desperately fought the desire to shout her name, in hopes of an answer just to let him know she was all right. This shouldn't be taking so long. Something was wrong. Something bad must have happened and maybe she was hurt, or worse, and it was all his fault for sending her into danger with nothing to protect her ...

"Made it!" a triumphant voice suddenly whispered in the Ranger's ear, which made him nearly jump right out of his skin. A moment later, a ghostly, violet-lit image of a girl tossing her hood back became the more solid form of Sheila in the darkness. She held up several ears of corn to prove she'd ventured all the way out to the field where Uni had teleported. "See? I--"

The rest of the sentence was squeezed right out of her lungs when Hank threw his arms around her and practically crushed her in a relieved embrace. "Oh, my God, Sheila, what happened?" he demanded while trying to keep his voice as low as possible. "You took longer to come back than I thought! I was afraid something happened to you! What took you so long?"

"Sorry, sorry," she whispered back, feeling horrible now that she realized her brief delay had caused such worry. The Thief tried to explain, as quietly as she could, that she thought that taking just a quick little step over the threshold and then dashing back into the town really wasn't a very good test of the curse. She had deliberately strode out into the field as far as Uni had gone, then, when she'd decided to grab the ears of corn while she was out there, her Cloak had snagged on something in the stalks. Unable to clearly see what she was doing in the darkness, the process of getting herself gently untangled had taken a few minutes. She'd known better than to just yank herself free; if she didn't accidentally pull her Cloak off and become visible, at the very least she'd cause all the corn stalks to swish around violently and give away her position. But by her own sense of timing, she had been gone only a short while. She truly hadn't realized how unbearably long it seemed to those on the inside.

"Sheila Caitlin O'Brien, you know I would have believed you even if you didn't have the corn to prove it," Hank scolded lightly. He couldn't see her embarrassed expression as she looked away in the darkness, but he gave her one more hug anyway, just to let her know he wasn't angry with her. "Okay," he continued after a moment, uneasiness obviously creeping into his tone, "I guess that means it's Eric's turn."

When they'd come up with this plan earlier today, they all knew that whether Uni and Sheila could make it out was ultimately a moot point. The real test was whether someone completely visible could physically pass directly through the open gates without coming to any harm. At first, Hank had insisted he was going to be the guinea pig for that final test, since he naturally felt it was his duty to take the risk for all his friends. He also had little respect for a leader who would order his followers to do something he himself would not do.

Unbelievably to some, but not so surprising to others, Eric had protested this suggestion. Specifically, he claimed, with a crypticness worthy of Dungeon Master himself, that he should be the one to be stupid so that no one else had to. His point was valid: while they were fairly certain that there was no curse, they were forced to admit they were not completely positive. There was always the chance of a fireball or a lightning storm that some evil Wizard had waiting up his sleeve to fry the first person he saw step through that gate. Eric then conceded that yes, a fireball up somebody's sleeve had to be pretty uncomfortable, but his point was that he was the one in possession of the Shield. If there was a magical attack awaiting anyone who tried to leave the town, he was the only one who stood a chance of surviving it.

Eric had also mentioned that this would be the third suicide mission he'd successfully returned from, and there was just something kind of cool about that.

Hank had agreed, reluctantly at first, but he ultimately realized that Eric had thought this through and was volunteering of his own free will. It was now time for him to make good on that promise. "Sheila," Hank whispered, "maybe you should get over to Bobby and make sure he doesn't get too excited by all this. I'll give you to the count of twenty, then I'll signal Eric."

Silently, Sheila turned herself invisible, and the strange feeling of emptiness in the space she had occupied a moment ago indicated she had quickly moved away. The Ranger gave her the count he had indicated, then cupped a hand to his mouth and made a sound very much like the call of a coyote, another sound he had taught himself to mimic. It was the signal for Eric to proceed.

The Cavalier was not seen to jump right up and go through the gates immediately. Hank didn't blame him in the least ... even though Eric had willingly volunteered for this, it was a terrifying proposition. He probably needed a minute or two to steady his nerves and convince his feet to move.

At last, a shadow rose up from behind the upturned cart and moved cautiously towards the opening in the town's high walls. Holding his Shield over his head like an umbrella, Eric walked gingerly, almost as if he couldn't quite believe he was doing this.

Hank found himself holding his breath from the unbearable anticipation, and he gripped his Bow harder and harder with each wary step Eric took, not even noticing his fingers were going numb from the pressure.

_Be safe, buddy, be safe ... _

**ooo**

"I don't believe it!"

"Meeeyaah! Mown meleeev ih!"

"I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it!"

"Can you believe the guts it took to pull something like this off?"

"I feel like a complete idiot that we fell for it!"

"I can't believe he's been pulling off bluffs like this for at least ten years now!"

"Yeah, and the worst part is that Dungeon Master actually told us this was the case. God, I feel like a dimwit."

Back in their borrowed house, the gang's excited babbling screeched to a halt, and all eyes turned to Eric in the candlelight. The Cavalier was shaking his head in frustration, mentally kicking himself for not thinking a little more closely about Dungeon Master's exact choice of words.

"Huh?" Presto blurted about the same time Diana turned from her post at the window and asked, "Come again?"

"You remember," Eric sighed. Striking a pose that mimicked Dungeon Master remarkably, he quoted, "_His tools are fear and despair, which vanquish hope more completely than any show of arms_."

"Well, yeah ...?" Presto began uncertainly, not quite making the mental connections that Eric obviously had.

"He said 'his tools are fear and despair,' dummy," the Cavalier explained, though it almost seemed like the 'dummy' comment was directed at himself more than anyone else. "Not 'fear and despair and oh yeah by the way a big fat curse.' Okay, I'm gonna say it," he admitted with a lopsided grin. "Hank, you were right. The only thing that keeps all these people here is the fact that they're afraid to leave! And pretty soon they'll be falling so far into that despair stuff that they'll give up and surrender, just like the Duke wants!" Shaking his head again, he sighed, "There's your fear and despair, all right. Dungeon Master told us the truth, and we just ... I dunno, filled in some blanks that didn't need filling in. You know, now that I think about it, first time we heard the word 'curse' was from Tolan, not Dungeon Master at all."

"Well, that's because Lord Tolan actually saw the Duke and heard him go on about a curse, and he'd seen all those other towns that he was told had been destroyed by a curse," Diana reasoned. "What else was he supposed to think?"

"I don't know," Eric admitted. "But it shows you how fast everybody believed the Duke." What he did not need to comment on out loud was how quickly they themselves had believed him, too.

Presto nodded to himself as the whole picture finally came into focus. It was like they'd had all the pieces all along, but were trying to put the puzzle together based on the wrong reference photo entirely. "That explains why Lord Tolan said all the most powerful Wizards in his city couldn't find a clue about how the Duke was gonna place the curse. It wasn't 'cause he covered his tracks so well. It's because there was never anything to find in the first place. I just don't get why we figured it out in just a couple days, when the people here have been stuck here for months and never got the hint."

"Sometimes, it just takes a different set of eyes," Diana suggested. "Maybe we just saw things a little differently than they did. I mean, not to be rude or anything, but in case you haven't noticed, the people here aren't terribly educated. Maybe it was easier than we think to pull off a hoax of this level here, because they were more apt to fall for it. But when you come right down to it, how many people do you think are keeping watch at one in the morning to see other people up to no good?" She nodded to Eric, conceding the Cavalier's major role in their first breakthrough.

"Yeah," Eric continued, making a further acknowledgment. "And with so many depressed people looking down all the time, I'll bet that nobody has ever looked up and noticed that birds have probably been flying in and out of this place all along."

"Plus, I'll bet it's, you know, hard to keep your hopes up when you see people running around telling everyone that the only way to survive is, like, by surrendering to the Duke," Presto agreed. "Worse has got to be listening to them telling you to kill yourself quick so you won't suffer and starve. I mean, those guys that are working for the Duke have probably done way more psychological harm to this town than, you know, physical damage."

"At least everyone's going to be okay now," Sheila smiled. She'd long since given up trying to convince Bobby it was well past his bedtime. It was probably two in the morning, but they were all too excited to sleep, anyway. "Tomorrow we can tell everyone that there's no curse and that it's safe to leave here."

"Yeah ... except, there's a problem with that," Hank interrupted.

"Of course," Eric sighed, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. What god in this world had they offended, so that nothing ever turned out easy for them? "There's always a problem. Okay, oh Fearless Leader, what is it this time?"

"Couple of problems, actually," Hank reflected. He'd been thinking this over carefully, and had already come to the conclusions that the others would probably arrive at once they sat their excitement aside and really considered their next step. "First of all, we can't just *tell* them and expect anybody to take us seriously. Nobody's going to believe us if we can't show them any hard proof. I mean, when we started putting it all together, we had a ton of evidence right in our faces, but we still sat here trying to come up with every argument we could think of to convince ourselves that we were wrong, and that there really was a curse after all. I think you said it just a minute ago, Diana. You wouldn't have believed it if you hadn't seen Eric walk through the gate and survive. If we just tell the people here that the curse doesn't exist, they'll think we're crazy, or liars, or purposely trying to get them all killed."

"Yeah, so?" Diana asked. "So what if we can't just tell them? All we have to do is show everyone that we can go through the gate tomorrow, and ... oh," she trailed off when she realized where Hank was going with this. "Yeah, you're right. Those guys."

"You got it. Those guys, the butchers, they're watching us," Hank agreed. "We know that for a fact now. As soon as we start making some noise about having people come watch us leave the city, they'll call the Duke, we'll get blown away the second we walk through the gate, and the people here will go on thinking there's still a curse. Simple as that."

"Well ... um, what if we, you know, told everyone that it wasn't a curse at all, just the Duke out there blasting away at us?" Presto began to suggest, but then stopped himself when he realized he'd already answered this question earlier in the evening. Complex curse or simple spell, most people couldn't tell the difference. When it came to destruction, a fireball was a fireball, and no matter where it came from, the townsfolk would be just as terrified. Until somebody actually did something about the Duke, they were right back where they'd started.

"Amazing, isn't it?" Eric asked with a heavy dose of irony. Sitting down with a huff, he wrapped his cape around himself and continued, "Here we know the truth, but we can't just tell anybody because they won't believe us, and we can't go out and show anybody without getting ourselves a big ol' face full of boom. In other words, we haven't actually accomplished anything and we still don't have a shot at getting home."

"If you think that feels bad, can you imagine how horrible it would be to find out there was never a curse after all, if you were one of the people who's been trapped here all this time?" Sheila mused compassionately as she crossed the small room to stir at the orange embers of their low fire, piling on a few more sticks to keep them warm through the night. The shadows in the room danced and flickered as the flames grew. One of them flickered in quite the wrong direction, considering the angle of the light given off by the open firebox. "Watching all the people you care about starve and die like this," the Thief continued, simply not noticing anything wrong with the shadows any more than her friends had. "Or like the owner of the first house Jakarth took us to, the one who died from some sickness because nobody could leave to get him the right medicine. Can you imagine if that was your father? Having to watch your father die right in front of you, thinking there was no way you could go get help. Just think how you'd feel when you found out there was never anything stopping you in the first place."

A funny look crossed Eric's features as they heard out Sheila's sympathetic thoughts. A look that said that frankly, if his dad had died right in front of him like that, it probably wouldn't have bothered him all that much. He glanced at Hank, who just shrugged. Between the two of them, they had never quite decided which was worse: a cold, condescending father who was present but completely uninterested and uninvolved in your life, or a father who had just walked out of your life entirely. Sheila's example didn't quite resonate with them the way it did with Diana, Presto, and even Bobby, but all of them could at least see her point to some degree.

"I'd probably kill myself," Diana admitted in answer to Sheila's question. Unlike the older boys in their group, she had a very close relationship with her father, as well as with her mother. Their smiling faces were the last ones she pictured every night before she went to sleep. To say she loved them and missed them terribly was an understatement. "I mean, I feel like a complete doof for thinking we were trapped here for just a couple days, and compared to what these people are going through, nothing really bad has happened to us. Even you guys getting mugged, because that was pretty bad, but at least nobody got hurt. I just don't want to think about what the people will do when they find out that their friends and families were dying here for months on end just because somebody bluffed them."

"They'd probably be messed up, like, for life," Presto guessed, in truth quite accurately. "I mean, just think about, you know, how long that thing with the teacher's door not being locked has stuck with you. And all that did was make you feel silly. People died here. If we didn't get, like, a riot or something when people find out the truth, I'd be surprised."

Most of this conversation was bouncing right off Bobby's head. As far as he was concerned, they'd proven to themselves that they were free to go, so he couldn't fathom what was stopping them. Yet his friends were implying that they were still stuck here, which left him completely confused. He made mention of this fact.

"We haven't solved the basic problem, which is the Duke of Darkness," Hank tried to explain. "Even if we did sneak out in the middle of the night, he's still out there. He'll just keep on doing what he's doing to this town, or else he'll go somewhere else and start all over again. And don't forget, we can't just leave, or else we won't get a shot at using his Sphere thing to get home. We have to get him here personally and face him down."

"And how do we do that?" Eric asked, before amending himself, "No, wait, I think I already know. Make a challenge he can't refuse?"

"Like what?" Presto asked curiously. From what he could see, walking out the gates would just get them blasted from afar, and they'd never get a glimpse of their attacker. What kind of a challenge would threaten the Duke of Darkness into actually showing his face in Dastirum?

"Easy," Hank answered. "And it's going to kill two birds with one stone, if you think about it. We can let the people here believe they've been set free at the same time as making the Duke think he's going to have to come here and stop us. Since this whole curse was nothing but a big show anyway, tomorrow, we're going to put on a big show of breaking it."

An evil grin crept its way onto Eric's face as they considered this plan. "Yeah," he said with clear satisfaction, "beat him at his own game. That'll tick him off, all right."

**ooo**

"M ... Master?" It was a quiet call, specifically modulated to avoid catching the attention of the one to whom it was addressed.

Nervously, Shadow Demon floated back and forth through the air, the incorporeal equivalent of pacing. His pupil-less eyes gazed at the door before him with a certain level of apprehension. Though he could seep through a keyhole or drift between the hinges as easily as a ray of midnight, this was one threshold he would never cross, even if his shadowy life depended upon it. This was the door to his Master's private chamber.

It was seventeen minutes to three in the morning -- according to the old pendulum clock that Venger kept in his astronomy laboratory in the north tower -- and Shadow Demon was seriously considering letting his news wait until dawn. Very few things, in the insubstantial lackey's estimation, were worth waking Venger at this hour. If, in fact, the Boss slept at all. Shadow Demon had long since lost track of the years he'd spent in Venger's service, and to this day he was not sure if his Master actually slept, meditated, communed with the Nameless One, or, for all he knew, just sat down and read a good book. Frankly, Shadow Demon didn't want to find out. He could easily pretend he'd been in Dastirum all along, spying on those children all night, and then report his findings with the dawn ...

"Yes?"

Shadow Demon froze. So much for not attracting The Boss's attention.

A click, and the door creaked open of its own volition, revealing a pitch-black interior. A moment later, Shadow Demon fought the overwhelming urge to dissipate himself and flee as Venger, clad in his gray robe and blood-red armor as always, strode purposefully out of the darkness.

Shadow Demon's hesitation nearly cost him dearly. "I assume you have some purpose for disturbing my rest?" Venger snapped, raising a clawed and glowing hand as his black, batlike wings spread threateningly.

"Y-yes, Master! Indeed I do!" Shadow Demon nearly tripped over his nonexistent tongue trying to get the words out. "The Young Ones! They have finally discovered that the curse on Dastirum is nothing more than a charade perpetrated by a second-rate Wizard!"

The look that passed over Venger's face was so incredulous that it might have been amusing to anyone other than Shadow Demon in this particular situation. "At *this* hour?" he demanded in clear disbelief.

"Yes, well, no, not exactly, Master," Shadow Demon fumbled, hoping he wasn't backing himself into a proverbial corner with his less than well-considered reply. "They began to suspect the truth yesterday afternoon. They merely waited until now, when they could try their theory under the cover of darkness."

Venger seemed to consider this, then he nodded to himself, as if approving of either the Young Ones' logic, or the caution they had employed in testing it. "They are nothing if not clever," he conceded grudgingly. "And what is their plan, now that they know the truth?"

"They wish to force Dubhar's hand," Shadow Demon explained quickly, beginning to realize that by some unknown luck, he was going to get out of this without dire harm to his person. "And they wish to convince the people of Dastirum that they are free. I believe the Ranger's exact words were, 'since the curse was nothing but a big show,' tomorrow they plan to 'put on a show of breaking it' so that Dubhar will personally show himself in Dastirum to stop them. They, in turn, plan to reveal in some elaborate manner that the power of his curse amounts to nothing."

"Interesting," Venger mused. "It is a certainty that Dubhar has spies assisting him from within. What plans have the children for dealing with them?"

"The Young Ones had not planned that far," Shadow Demon admitted, hoping that was far enough from an 'I don't know' that he wouldn't get blasted for it. "They mentioned something about coming up with some ideas in the morning after they had slept on it."

"Hm," the Dark Lord said thoughtfully, folding his wings precisely about his shoulders as he began walking down the hall, in the direction of his vast collection of spell books. "The spies should be easy enough to deal with," he added, more to himself than anything. Reaching the library, he abruptly turned and ordered, "Shadow Demon. Make all preparations necessary. We must be to Dastirum by dawn."

"To ... combat Dubhar?" the shadowy servant ventured hesitantly, not entirely sure what, exactly, he was preparing for.

"To observe," Venger corrected as he pondered the cracked spines of several of his aged tomes. "There is no need to cause trouble in Yarfell when it is not necessary," he explained smoothly enough that anyone besides Shadow Demon might have believed he had no fear of showing his face in that kingdom. "I believe those children are perfectly capable of defeating Dubhar, and I wish to see his humiliation firsthand."

Somehow, Shadow Demon didn't think that was quite what his Master was driving at. He guessed it had more to do with being on hand to collect the Weapons if the children succeeded in using Dubhar's celestial artifact to teleport out of this world. "And what if Dubhar prevails, Master?" he asked carefully.

Angrily, Venger slammed shut the grimoire he had just opened. "I will prevent it myself, if I must," he snarled at his terrified lackey. "Under no circumstances will I allow the self-styled Duke of Darkness to bring harm to any of those children."


	8. Setting the Stage

**Dastirum**

Chapter 8: Setting the Stage

**ooo**

First light brought the first eagerly anticipated morning that had dawned on Dastirum in almost six months. True, it was only anticipated by five teenagers, one undersized Barbarian, and a baby Unicorn. But soon enough, if all went according to plan, everyone would have a reason to celebrate this day.

Standing third watch, Presto woke his friends when the red sun, the first to rise, touched the morning clouds with a bright, pinkish hue. It was still early, but they needed the time to iron out their plans, collect a few items, and gather up what little help they'd been offered. The real show would begin in a few hours.

Breakfast was almost a spectacular failure. Presto's Hat refused to wake up and would not provide anything beyond a couple ounces of salty, hard cheese. Fortunately, they had the ears of corn that Sheila had picked the night before, which had turned out to be dry and shriveled once they were husked. Highly sensitive to the lack of water, the entire crop had suffered since none of the farmers could tend and irrigate their fields. Nevertheless, the corn did not go to waste. Once the dessicated kernels had been scraped from the ears, a few light taps from Bobby's Club turned them into a coarse, powdery meal. Sheila, who in truth was a surprisingly good cook, boiled the grits and managed to serve them all a decent breakfast of cornmeal polenta with melted cheese on top. Uni ate the remaining apples from the previous morning.

Meager as it was, they all knew their breakfast was a feast compared to what everyone else in the town was eating this morning. Hopefully, by this time tomorrow, all the people trapped here would be feasting and rejoicing, and they themselves would long since be home.

"All right, let's do this," Hank said after breakfast was cleared away, gathering his friends up like the home team right before the big football game. "Presto, you start collecting up everything you need that looks like it can be used to break a curse. You've got to put on a really convincing show here."

"I'm on it," Presto nodded, running through the mental list of various objects he'd made the night before. He was just going to be using everyday objects he found around the house, but that was okay. They didn't have to be the least bit magical to work. People just had to *believe* they were magical.

"Sheila, first thing's first, I want you to get Bobby in place," their leader continued, referring to a position they'd plotted out over breakfast.

"You got it," Sheila answered as Bobby pumped his fist in the air, a huge grin splitting his face. Finally, some real action!

"Meeyannaah?"

"Sorry, Uni, people are still starving here, so you'd better stay put unless you want them to eat you the second they see you," Hank answered reasonably. "You've had a night's sleep since you last teleported, so you should be able to do it again if you need to. If someone comes looking for trouble while we're gone, just get yourself out of the city, okay?"

"Um," Eric interrupted incredulously, "did you actually understand what she just said there?"

"Apparently I did. Okay, Sheila," Hank continued, clearly unfazed by the point Eric had made, "check in with us after you get Bobby into place, then I want you and Diana to go to the butchers' shop and see what you can find. Diana, I want you watching the butchers themselves. Follow them if they leave and find out what they're up to."

"You want me to let you know when they call the Duke?" the Acrobat asked.

"Oh, I figure we're going to know the minute they call the Duke, one way or another," Hank answered. "What we need to know is if they *don't* call the Duke. We could still be wrong about them, you know. Or, if we're right and they are working for him, I need you to make sure they don't start stirring up any trouble on their own. I don't want us to have to deal with anything besides the Duke if things get crazy. Eric?"

"Present and accounted for, oh Fearless Leader," Eric said as he leapt to his feet and gave a jaunty salute. He held a small canvas sack in his other hand.

"Time for you and me to go round up some assistants," Hank told him. Grabbing his Bow, he took a deep breath and ran the plan through his mind one more time, trying to think if there were any more flaws than the half-dozen or so they'd already discussed this morning. "All right, everyone," he said with as much confidence as he could muster, "keep your heads on your shoulders, and let's hope this works."

**ooo**

"There?"

"There."

"You sure?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

Had anyone passed through the town square this early in the morning, he might have paused and made a quick sign warding against evil spirits before hurrying on his way. But the disembodied voices did not belong to a pair of ghosts. It was just the sound of a pair of young siblings, hiding together beneath a Cloak of Invisibility as they surveyed the walls around Dastirum.

"Well, how can you tell?"

"Bobby, it doesn't have to be exact," the more feminine of the two voices whispered. "Just keep your eyes open, move if you have to, and promise me you'll be careful, all right?"

"All right, all right, I'll be careful already," the voice of the young boy answered petulantly.

"You'd better be. All right, now come on."

There was no sign of movement in the town square. But the voices were there no longer.

**ooo**

_Knock. Knock. Knock._

A pause. A count of thirty seconds.

_Knock. Knock. Knock._ _Knock._

Finally, a click. A latch sliding back. A creak as the door opened.

"Morning," Hank greeted as Baris, looking tired and hungry, stared at him in surprise. "Sorry to skip the pleasantries, but this is kind of important. How serious were you when you said you'd help us fight the Duke of Darkness when we break his curse?"

The young Dastirite's expression changed instantly. There was a gleam shining in his eye that had not been seen in any of the townsfolk for months. He opened the door fully and stepped into the suns-light. "Serious as you was when you said you was gonna break the curse in the first place," he answered.

"Good," Hank nodded. "Does that go for your wife, too?"

Instead of answering, Baris turned slightly and called into the small house, "Corheen? Come here a minute, would you, Love?"

A moment later, the russet-haired woman that they had met two days ago stepped onto the porch and looked over her husband's shoulder. "Oh!" she said in mild surprise, then dared to look a little hopeful. "Hullo again. You said you'd come calling if you found a way to break the curse. Does this mean you think you can do it?"

"Oh, I don't just think we can break the curse, I *know* it," Hank grinned, which made husband and wife exchange the first smiles they'd shared in a long time. "You guys said that you'd fight the Duke of Darkness if you got the chance. Well, that chance is going to happen this morning. Still want it?"

Husband and wife again glanced at one another, and each nodded to the other without saying a word. "Whatever we can do, we'll do it," Baris answered. "Even if it gets us killed. There's an old saying about dying on your feet rather than living on your knees."

"And I've heard that one person defending their home is worth seven hired soldiers," Hank answered, though in all honestly, he wasn't entirely sure where or when he'd heard that particular saying. "So once my partner gets your friends, Collin and Sora, then we've practically got an army." Opening the canvas sack, the contents of which he'd split with Eric, he offered the couple the very last of the traveler's rations that Lord Tolan had given them seemingly a lifetime ago: two thick strips of venison jerky each. "Here, this isn't much, but maybe it'll help keep your strength up if you're going to fight."

Hank felt a little disturbed and slightly guilty as the pair grabbed and desperately devoured the strips of dried meat. He wished there was some way he could have shared their food with these people before, but it was like Presto said, they couldn't feed everyone in this entire town. "So, do you have any weapons to fight with?" he asked once Baris and Corheen had finished their brief but welcome meal.

"My wife's a Witch," Baris answered, then his eyes widened sheepishly when he seemed to realize that statement could carry more than one interpretation. "I mean, not a hag. She's a Sorceress. A Magician," he explained over Corheen's sudden, embarrassed protests.

"No, I'm not!" she interrupted. "Not a very good one, anyway. I could never focus my magic well enough to ever hope I was gonna be powerful. Oh, I was studying for a while, but the Wizard what was training me ..." here she paused, and looked at her feet. She had to swallow hard before continuing, "She was one o' the first ones to die when the Duke o' Darkness laid his curse on us. I never finished my apprenticeship. I know a few spells, mostly cantrips. Nothing what would help in a fight."

"You'd be surprised," Hank answered in that encouraging tone he somehow always managed even when the chips were down. "I've seen a Magician friend of mine take down the bad guys with a spell that produced nothing but flowers. So don't tell me your spells are useless until you've actually tried them out. Now, Baris, how about you? Do you have any weapons or anything to help in a fight?"

"No, 'fraid not," Baris answered. "The son o' an innkeeper don't have much call for weapons."

Hank looked a little concerned at this revelation. "But do you at least know how to use a sword, or a lance, or an axe, or something?"

"I trained to be a soldier, once," Baris answered, a little shame-faced. "But when my mother died about six years ago, my father needed me here. I left the army after three months."

"Well, then," the Ranger said cheerfully as he hefted his Bow for them to see, "you had three months more training than I did when I got this. Here," he added when inspiration struck, unbuckling the loops of the frog closure that strapped the Sword's scabbard to his belt. He looked up and down the street to make sure they weren't being watched before offering, "I'm not about to let you run into a battle without a way of defending yourself, so take this. And keep it. It's yours for helping us, okay? A Sword's not my style anyway. But be careful. It's one of the Weapons of Power, and as far as I can tell, it can cut through anything."

Baris, who had just pulled the Sword from its scabbard, paused in concern. He glanced at his fingers, appeared relieved to find they were all still attached, and held the Weapon a little more gingerly. "Anything?"

"Anything. I've had to repair the sheath four times already, and I've only had it about a week."

"I see," Baris answered, which sounded like a solemn vow that he would in fact be very, very careful as he handled the Weapon. Then, just to be sure of its power, the young Dastirite spotted a rock near the front stoop, took aim at it, and chopped it cleanly in two with one light sweep. "Yeah," he added with a growing smile as he inspected the blade. There wasn't a nick or scratch to be found. "I see, all right. Well, live or die, we're honored to fight with you today."

"I just wish more people felt the way you do," Hank answered quietly as he led the couple down the street where they were to meet up with Eric and the other half of their home-grown army.

**ooo**

"That's the place, there. The one with the sign that looks like a severed pig's head."

"Ugh," Sheila replied to Diana's directions, wrinkling her nose in disgust. She knew she shouldn't judge, since it was common for shops to have signs resembling their wares in a world where illiteracy was rampant. But somehow, the sign commented a little too accurately on the men who betrayed and, in a roundabout way, murdered their own neighbors. "Do you think they're in there?"

"Can't tell," Diana shook her head. "And I nominate you to go find out. I'll cover you."

"That's why we're here," Sheila agreed. Flipping up her hood, she vanished from sight, leaving Diana alone behind the free-standing wall Presto had used as a lookout post the night before.

The Acrobat's dark eyes watched the entire street with alert intensity. She couldn't see Sheila crossing the cobblestone street, of course, but noticed when some of the weedy shrubs by the side of the shop bobbed out of the way slightly. Sheila was under their window now, listening carefully or possibly even looking in. Leaving the Thief to her spying, Diana took to her task of watching the street for interlopers and watching the butchers' doors in case someone went in or out of the residence before Sheila had finished.

A minute passed with nothing more eventful than an old man shuffling down the street, carrying a bucket in the direction of the one functioning well. Eventually, Diana saw the shrub bob slightly again, and moments later, a perfectly visible Sheila joined her behind the rickety wall.

"They're both in there," the Thief whispered without preamble. "I could hear them talking."

"They say anything important?" Diana asked quietly.

"Not that I could hear," Sheila replied. "Not like what you and Eric heard yesterday, anyway. They were saying something about somebody dying last night."

"Oh," Diana answered, her heart sinking a little bit. One more Dastirite lost to a deadly charade. They'd been too late to help him by only a few hours. It didn't seem fair. "Well, at least they're not on to us yet. Could you see anything?"

"Not really," Sheila admitted, thinking she was going to have to get inside the building before she could find anything of use. "The glass in the window was pretty blurry, I couldn't make much out."

"Well, then, we're just going to have to wait and hope they leave," Diana decided. In an echo of Sheila's thoughts, she explained, "Once they're out of there, you can do some pretty thorough snooping. In the mean time, I'll follow them. They're probably going to come looking for us again today, to make sure we don't cause any more trouble."

"Boy, are they in for a surprise," Sheila agreed. Then they simply sat, and watched, and waited.

Ten or fifteen long, uneventful minutes later, when the girls were certain that Presto had gathered up everything he needed and was ready to put on his show by now, they both suddenly shot to attention, their focus riveted entirely on the butchers' shop. The front door had just opened.

"Get ready," Diana mouthed silently. Sheila merely nodded in acknowledgment, then pulled her hood up over her head and vanished once again.

The butchers seemed to be in no hurry. They trudged up the street, presumably towards the residential part of town. Each of them carried what looked like an empty burlap sack. It was too great a distance to hear what they were saying, but from the casual nature of the two brothers, Diana guessed they conversed about something inconsequential. Good. At least the butchers' attention was on something other than the actions of a group of strange children this morning.

Once they had disappeared around the corner of the next street, and Diana was reasonably sure they weren't about to turn around and come back, she nodded in Sheila's general direction. "Good luck," she quietly wished her friend.

She felt, but could not see, Sheila rise and hurry from their hidden position. Other than that, the only indication she had at all of the invisible Thief's movement was the mysterious opening and closing of the butchers' front door. Sheila was in. Hoping that the rest of their plan would go with as few hitches as they had so far, Diana backed up several steps, extended her Staff, and, with a running start, vaulted onto the nearest solid rooftop. Padding quickly and silently across this house and leaping to the next, then the next, she quickly spotted her quarry. The two brothers walked together down the street, their heads down and their gait slow, putting on a convincing show of being broken and defeated as the rest of the townspeople. Since they had no reason to look up, neither of them spotted the dark silhouette of the Acrobat against the morning suns, tracking their every move. Diana wondered where they were going. Then again, that was what she was here to find out.

**ooo**

Sheila planned on doing as thorough a search as she could in the fifteen minutes she had allotted herself. By that amount of time, she was fairly certain that Presto would have started his "magical ritual," and one or both of the butchers would come running back to this place to contact the Duke of Darkness.

Chances were that she would have no warning when the men came back to their shop. Plus, once they returned, there would be no way for her to get out. Invisible or not, if she opened the door to slip out, it would blatantly give her presence away. Sheila swallowed nervously and tried to push the thought aside, reminding herself to trust the power of her Cloak. As long as she was careful and quiet so she wouldn't be discovered, it wouldn't matter if she was temporarily trapped inside the shop with the men. With the outlandish show the boys were putting on in the town square, it wasn't very likely that the butchers would remain in here for long.

Her search was meant to turn up whatever they used to contact the Duke of Darkness, or anything else that might clearly link the butchers to the man that was destroying their town and killing their neighbors. But for her own sake, she was also looking for a reason why they were doing what they did. Barely two minutes into her search, she was fairly certain she'd found it.

She never turned up any crystal balls or magic amulets, or any mirrors at all, enchanted or not, so she couldn't see how they could possibly contact the Duke. What she had found, almost immediately, were three crates of hardy root vegetables, several loaves of fresh bread, and a smoked ham. She'd been prepared for this and she was not surprised; Diana and Eric had mentioned these men might have a secret stash of food. It was upon turning away from the crates that she noticed the large sacks.

There were six old burlap sacks in the back room, about the size of a 50-pound bag of flour each. They were stacked in an out-of-the way corner and shielded from the casual observer by a pile of disturbingly stained butcher's aprons. At first, Sheila thought they were the bags of salt that the men had been pouring on the gardens, but upon closer inspection, she realized they were far too lumpy and angular to contain anything finely granular. Curious, and a little apprehensive, she opened the first one.

She gasped. The sheer, glittering beauty of the sight utterly took her breath away. Hardly believing what she saw, Sheila carefully reached into the sack and withdrew the topmost item: a fluted, silver toasting chalice set with four round sapphires. Her eyes widened in both shock and appreciation of the beautiful silversmithing. When she finally pulled her eyes away, she looked down into the sack and saw it was stuffed to nearly bursting with similar valuables. Silver and copper items outnumbered gold by at least ten to one, and most of the gemstones were only of semi-precious nature, but still, if the other sacks held similar treasures, she was looking at a considerable amount of wealth. She stared at it for a moment more, stunned, before the ramifications began to sink in. The men who owned this shop were simple butchers. Theirs was not a tremendously wealthy profession. With the money they probably made, they might have been able to afford a fancy ring or two, possibly even a set of silver drinking goblets, but not this much. Where had they gotten all these valuables?

She stared at the chalice for a long time, trying to come up with an explanation. This didn't look like a collection of meaningful valuables, this looked more like hoarding. What was the point of stockpiling such wealth here and now? As they had figured when they arrived in this town, precious metal had no value here. You couldn't eat it, and it wouldn't keep you warm and dry. In the face of utter starvation and poverty, a loaf of bread or a sturdy blanket had more worth than the goblet she held.

And yet, these men obviously knew something that the rest of the town did not. Working with the Duke of Darkness, if that was what they were doing, had mostly likely earned them a free ticket out of this imaginary prison. In fact, if they had the knowledge that there was never a curse to begin with, they probably came and went as they pleased already. Silver and gold may not spend here, but it would spend anywhere else in the Realm that they chose to go.

Of course, all she really had to do was look at the way the treasures were stuffed randomly and carelessly in old feed sacks, then camouflaged from accidental discovery, to understand what was happening here. _They must have stolen it all_, she reasoned, suddenly realizing the meaning of the sacks she'd seen the two men carrying as they'd left their shop. _They're looting the homes when people die! Once the townspeople go in and grab what food and supplies the dead person leaves behind, then these guys waltz in and steal the gold and silver and stuff that nobody takes because they can't eat it! This place is a frontier town, so it's not super rich, I guess that's why there's not a lot of gold or diamonds here. These are probably family heirlooms, or wedding gifts, stuff that really meant something to the people they stole it from._

Sheila looked very disconcerted at her own thought. She had desperately wanted to believe that the men had some valid reason for doing what they did, but the truth was becoming obvious enough to dash her hopes. This was their reward for helping the Duke. He would claim the lands and its people, and they, in turn, would get the spoils of war, and maybe a position of rank in the Duke's service. She tried valiantly to fight the tears coming to her eyes, but she was clearly disheartened as another chink was put in her normally positive view of Human nature. It truly seemed that the roles the butchers had played in creating this obscene level of Human suffering had been motivated by the love of wealth.

**ooo**

Swallowing nervously, Presto surveyed the scene for the eighth time. The plaza was basically devoid of people this morning, which, if all went well, would only last a short while. What he was about to do would certainly attract the Dastirites' attention. That was exactly what he wanted: as many witnesses as possible needed to see, with their own eyes, that the Duke's curse was so much bunk.

When all was said and done, what the Dastirites would believe they had seen was the curse being broken, and their town being set free. Frankly, that part didn't sit so well with Presto. Not the part about freeing the townspeople, he was quite happy about that. It was the thought of pulling off such an elaborate deception to do it. None of them particularly relished the idea that they were perpetuating a hoax on these poor people. Come right down to it, they were doing pretty much exactly what the Duke of Darkness himself had done to this town. He had lied and said he'd placed a curse on Dastirum, and now they were going to lie and say they'd broken it.

This was one of the half-dozen or so drawbacks they could see in their plan. So what if turnabout was considered fair play, outright lying like that gave most of them a good, sharp kick in the morals. Unfortunately, there wasn't much that could be done about it.

_Besides_, Presto reminded himself, _we're just putting on a show to get the Duke here. Once the fight begins, that's going to be real. When we get his teleportation Sphere away from him and show that he doesn't really have any power over this place, he won't be able to keep people trapped like he has been. So the people really *are* going to see that he can't hurt them any more._ _It's not like we're going to be lying about that. We're just omitting the fact that they weren't actually trapped to begin with._

Absently sticking his hand in the bag that was normally tied to the sash around his waist, the Magician ran his fingers through the coarse grit as he rehearsed exactly what he was going to do with it. It was simple sand, thoroughly non-magical. Bobby had made it at his request by collecting up a pile of the red rocks that decorated their house's tiny front yard, and reducing it to rough powder with one well-placed whack of his Club.

Presto looked up when he realized that the others, including the four Dastirites who he had met this morning, had just entered the town square. Hank, Eric, Baris, and Collin were lugging a table pilfered from Baris's father's inn between them, one of the few remaining pieces of furniture that had not been sacrificed for firewood. Corheen, who was to be Presto's magical assistant, was carrying a folded piece of fabric, a bundle of rosemary branches from an herb garden that had avoided the curse's salty blight, and a small bunch of dried lavender stalks. Sora toted a bucket full of water freshly drawn from the well.

_Showtime, _Presto told himself as he bent down to retrieve the cooking pot and other items he'd gathered this morning. _Time to start looking like I know what I'm doing._

**ooo**

Silent as a cat, Diana padded across the rooftops as she followed her quarry. Twice, she had to drop to the ground when no building stood close enough to leap to without making a noticeable thump upon landing, but each time, she was careful not to let the butchers see her. She regained the rooftops a moment later, and continued stalking her prey until they stopped at a house in the residential section of the town.

One of them knocked on the door. Diana crept closer to listen.

"... you sure?" the younger of the two brothers was asking. "I thought ol' Grian lived a couple doors that way." He gestured carelessly down the street.

"No, I think yer thinking of Aosda and his two sons what died when they tried to climb over the wall," the elder answered, pounding on the door again. When half a minute passed and still no one answered, he glanced at his brother, shrugged, and kicked the door open.

Diana did not need to see what Sheila had discovered to realize what these two were doing the moment they walked in the house of the dead man, and it made her blood burn. Obviously, they were looting.

Had they been any of the starving residents of Dastirum, here to take whatever means of survival they could find, Diana would have forgiven what she saw. But these men were not suffering. They were nonchalantly profiting from a man's death.

Diana had to draw up every reserve bit of willpower she had to keep herself from leaping down there and stopping this travesty. As much as she wanted to confront these grave robbers, she held herself back. The men couldn't be allowed to know they'd been found out. If they thought these strange kids were on to them, they might be able to figure out their plan and warn the Duke of Darkness. The Acrobat couldn't let that happen. Grinding her teeth, hating every moment of it, she remained furiously silent and allowed them to rob the dead.

**ooo**

Somewhere in the miles of verdant, rolling plains surrounding Dastirum, a lone figure on horseback might have been observing the town. Then again, perhaps not. It was difficult to tell.

Were a person to pass through a certain field to the west of the town, he might notice an unseasonable chill there. And perhaps he would make the sign of protection against the Evil Eye and hurry on his way when he felt something utterly malevolent watching him. And if, perchance, he were a brave enough soul to stop and wonder what it was, he might have a brief, fleeting impression of that mysterious, winged figure on horseback, but if he stopped to investigate further, it was almost guaranteed that he would find nothing. Only the most focused and observant persons in the Realm might possibly notice that there was a place in the field where the cold malevolence seemed greatest, which somehow, at the same time, felt even more unremarkable than the miles and miles of identical crops on all sides. It was so unremarkable that, were anyone to look directly at that spot, his attention would slide away, seemingly of its own volition, and note absolutely nothing out of the ordinary. The perfect normalcy of the field would suggest that there was nothing wrong here, that the traveler should simply move on and be about his business.

But there was no one this morning to walk by, no one to notice that chilling sense of evil and be propelled on his way by the strange suggestion to simply keep walking. For the moment, Venger preferred it that way. Seated on the back of his Nightmare, with Shadow Demon lurking in the little shade provided by the overgrown crops, Venger remained hidden in plain sight, observing the outer walls of Dastirum with his eyes, while watching the inner parts of the town with his magical Sight. Things, he could tell even from afar, were about to get interesting.

He smiled like a snake.


	9. Ritual

_**Disclaimer: **__The Author of this pale-by-comparison story offers sincere apologies to National Bestselling Author Jim Butcher, from whose fantastic and inspiring _Dresden Files_ I shamelessly borrowed the candle-lighting cantrip._

**ooo**

**Dastirum**

Chapter 9: Ritual

**ooo**

The stage was set. The players were all waiting in the wings, ready to perform, and the audience would come filing in at any moment.

The table was draped with a rune-embroidered cloth that Corheen had provided, which had been given to her by the Wizard who had begun her training. On it rested the cooking pot filled with fresh water, the rosemary branches bound together with a piece of cord and another length of cord lying loose beside it, the lavender stalks crumbled on a small, clay plate, the knife that Presto had found in the Dragon's Graveyard, a bowl of ashes he'd collected from the cookstove, five of his lopsided pillar candles, a scant handful of the dried corn that he'd rescued from becoming breakfast, and a stick of kindling from their stash of firewood.

Corheen, truly believing that she was helping stage a magical, curse-breaking ritual, struck a few sparks into the lavender with a flint and steel, blowing on the embers until the herb began to smolder like incense. She glanced up at Presto, who was walking in a wide circle around their makeshift altar, pouring the red sand on the ground as he muttered something which sounded vaguely like magical words. In reality, he was just reciting the Periodic Table by atomic number, and had gotten as far as vanadium.

"Why are you casting that Circle widdershins?" Corheen asked curiously. "Shouldn't you be circling deosil?"

"I know it may look a little weird to you, but trust me, a Wizard like him knows what he's doing," Hank answered quickly before the question caused Presto's carefully constructed facade of complete confidence to slip in hesitation.

Presto was grateful for that brief intercession on his behalf. It gave him a clue for coming up with a reply that concealed the fact that he had no idea what 'widdershins' and 'deosil' meant, though 'clockwise' and 'counterclockwise' did pass vaguely through his mind. "I am an American Wizard," he answered grandly, knowing that the only way this had a hope of working was for him to convince absolutely everyone that his every move was carefully calculated, utterly confident, and supremely powerful. In other words, the exact opposite of what he normally was. "My magic does not operate in the same way as yours. I will cast in the way that best suits me."

"Oh," Corheen answered meekly. She had no idea what an American Wizard was, but it sounded important.

Presto cast a quick nod in Hank's direction, silently thanking him for the assist. The Ranger winked in response, which bolstered Presto's confidence. It meant he was doing good so far. "Now then," Presto instructed, feigning complete calm as he finished pouring the sand in what he thought was a decent imitation of a magical Circle. "Light the candles."

Nodding silently, the apprentice Witch pointed a finger at the first candle. She pronounced the Words of a simple spell, "_Flickum Bicus_," and the wick immediately danced with an orange flame.

"Whoa. Pretty neat," Eric commented without thinking. Collin gave him a curious look.

"I thought your Wizard friend's magic was supposed to be about a hundred times more powerful than my sister's," the stocky young man commented, a little confused why a small cantrip would have impressed the Cavalier.

"I mean, pretty neat for a girl," Eric quickly corrected himself, and then, because he found he rather liked this particular group of Dastirites, decided to soften the blow even further. "For a girl with as little training as you said she has, anyway."

"Ah," Collin said simply, and left it at that.

Eric couldn't help but be impressed with Collin. Despite the fact that he was practically starving, the guy had been ready to go out and fight against unknown odds at a moment's notice, and, unlike Baris, Collin had been armed. He and his sister hailed from the highlands in the north of Yarfell, descendants of some of the fiercest warrior clans in the western Kingdoms. At the mere mention of a fight to defend his home, Collin had strapped on a leather jerkin and grabbed two weapons that came here with him from his homeland: a long, iron-tipped pike and a round shield of leather-covered wood, studded with brass hobnails and with a six-inch spike protruding from the center. Collin may not have been the brightest crayon in the box, but this was the kind of guy that Eric wanted to watch his back in a battle.

"The four of you," Presto said, interrupting Eric's thoughts when all five candles were lit. "Each of you take a candle. Corheen, stand to the West. Sora, to the East. Baris to the North, and Collin to the South. Hank, stand to my right at the altar, Eric, to my left. I am ready to begin."

As the four Dastirites found their positions just inside the perimeter of the Circle, Eric glanced in the direction of the residential section of the town. He counted eight, possibly nine people there, keeping their distance but watching with varying amounts of fear and curiosity mingling in their expressions. The bizarre behavior in the town square had not gone unnoticed.

"We're attracting an audience," Eric whispered out of the side of his mouth.

"I noticed," Hank answered in satisfaction as they stepped to either side of Presto. "And we're about to get a whole lot more." Neither of them were to play any part in the theatrical proceedings. They were there for the very real reason of protecting Presto when the Duke of Darkness inevitably struck at the primary troublemaker.

Presto raised his scrawny arms above his head, and his friends fell silent. He took a few deep, calming breaths, dowsing for a well of confidence he wasn't sure he had. Here went everything.

"By North, by South, by East, by West, this Circle is closed and may it be blessed!" Presto shouted in the most commanding tones he could manage while praying that his treacherously adolescent voice wouldn't break at the worst possible moment. "I call upon the spirits of Earth, Wind, and Fire ... and Water! The curse laid upon the fair town of Dastirum shall bind it no longer!"

Presto was just cobbling together the best attempt at a magical ritual he could come up with based on all the swords and sorcery he'd read and seen in the movies. He was doing better than he thought he was, really. Even Corheen was impressed.

"It's working," Eric whispered. Hank glanced over his shoulder and saw another handful of people who had been brought out of doors by Presto's shouting.

Grabbing the bundle of rosemary, the Magician dipped it into the makeshift cauldron full of water. Using the spiky herb as a brush, he walked around the circle, in what he assumed was a deosil direction this time instead of widdershins, flinging droplets of water in a wide arc all around. He made sure he did as thorough a job as possible, so as to stall for time as their audience grew. "Spirits of Water," he shouted so the heavens above could hear him, "cleanse away the blight upon these lands!"

While Presto continued to shout impressive-sounding nonsense, Eric scrutinized the crowd carefully. There were two faces he was looking for in particular, but he hadn't seen them yet. It was only a matter of time.

As Eric watched the onlookers, Hank scanned the skies, expecting the Duke's fireballs to come raining down on them at any moment. At least, he hoped it would be fireballs first. Those, he and Eric could deal with. There really wouldn't be much they could do if the Duke decided to strike out at them with an earthquake instead.

That was another one of those flaws they could see in their plan.

One of the few bits of information they had about the Duke of Darkness, according to what Diana and Eric had overheard, was that he liked to make examples of people. If that were true, it would have to be fireballs first. Fireballs or lightning. Either of those were far more personal and specific ways of dealing spectacularly with troublemakers than a general earthquake. That had to be how the Duke would lash out at them first. So if they played their cards right, death would come raining from the sky any minute now.

_Come on, come on, how much harder do we have to poke you in the eye to get your attention?_

**ooo**

Bored, Diana leaned casually against the chimney of the home on whose roof she was sitting. The boys were having all the fun and excitement in the town square, and here she was with the stupid duty of passively watching two guys robbing a dead man's house, just to make sure they didn't cause any trouble. Now she understood how Bobby must have felt, being stuck inside with nothing to do for almost three whole days. Poor kid.

She seriously considered throwing a pebble at one of the windows of the dead victim's house, just to alarm the looters and watch them run. That might be funny. Too bad there weren't any pebbles to be found on this rooftop. Maybe she could ... Uh, oh.

Diana's ears perked up when she suddenly heard a squeaky, yet surprisingly commanding voice shouting something in the morning silence. _Presto_, she realized immediately, as she stood and craned her neck to peer over the rooftops. The plaza was just a little too distant for Diana to make out the Magician's words clearly, but from what she could see, the show had begun and they'd already amassed a group of about twenty or thirty onlookers.

She smiled fondly. _Good ol' Presto. Now all he needs is a heavy dose of confidence and he could probably be one of the most powerful Wizards in the Realm._

The two most important onlookers to this whole spectacle had not yet even realized anything was amiss. Chewing her lower lip, Diana considered and discarded half a dozen ways of getting the butchers out of the house and into the street, where they could hear the rising tide of commotion and realize they had to call the Duke. She was just about to fall back on a simple and anonymous shout of, "Hey, does anybody else hear that?" when the problem solved itself for her.

Obviously, the butchers were quick and efficient when it came to looting other peoples' family heirlooms, because they'd managed to search the entire house, from top to bottom, in approximately nine minutes. Finished, having pilfered a pair of silver candlesticks, a filigreed copper mantel clock, a wallet full of coins, and a silver ring, they stole quickly from the house and were about ten steps down the street when the older of them paused. Putting a hand on his brother's arm to stop him, he turned, silently, and listened carefully to the shouting that just barely reached his ears. He said something to his brother, low and urgent enough that Diana couldn't discern the words from her rooftop perch. Quickly, the two of them hid their sacks of ill-gotten goods behind a badly-pruned shrub in the dead man's tiny yard, then dashed off in the direction of all the shouting.

_Game on, _Diana smiled to herself, and sprang neatly across the alley to follow the two men by her rooftop route.

**ooo**

Presto had just finished walking the Circle a second time, tossing up pinches of kitchen ash to float away in the slight morning breeze, as he called upon the spirits of Air to carry the foul corruption of the curse away upon the prairie winds. Now he was lighting the stick of kindling in the candle that burned on his improvised altar, quickly making up some fancy phrases for asking the spirits of Fire to burn away the curse with their purifying flames.

A small disturbance, just two men pushing through the growing crowd, caught Eric's attention. One glimpse was all it took to recognize the faces, and he felt a rush of adrenaline. "Hank," he whispered, catching the Ranger's attention. "There they are."

Hank spared just the briefest of glances before turning his eyes back to the sky as Presto continued his show. He wouldn't have known the two men on sight, but Eric and Diana's description of the men's relatively large size was a dead giveaway. "About time, too."

"There's Di," Eric added quietly, noticing a nimble figure running confidently along the peak of a rooftop. He hadn't quite expected her to be up there, but he had to admit, it was an ingenious way of following somebody without being seen. "And there goes one of those guys," he finished when he saw the two butchers step aside and confer quickly. One of them turned and ran, the other stayed to watch the scene unfolding before him.

"Leave them to her," Hank reminded Eric of the plan. "We're going to have enough problems of our own to deal with any minute now."

**ooo**

Diana smiled to herself in satisfaction as the elder of the two butchers turned and ran from the scene. He was probably heading back to their home now, ready to call the Duke of Darkness with an urgent report of what was happening here. Excellent.

Diana let him go. Sheila would know what to do when he got there.

All the Acrobat had to do was make sure the guy here didn't cause a commotion while they waited. So far, so good. He didn't seem inclined to do anything at the moment, but she had a feeling that was because he was giving his brother time to leave the area. Chances were good that he was planning on stirring up another mob scene, but he was waiting until he was sure his messenger to the Duke wouldn't get caught up in it by mistake.

It didn't leave Diana much time to act. Not really sure how to stop a person from causing trouble when she didn't know what kind of trouble he was planning, she decided to just take the bull by the horns. She couldn't attack him, not in front of all these witnesses. She was the stranger here, and attacking a Dastirite without any solid proof of wrongdoing would immediately turn the townsfolk against her and all her friends. Instead, she quickly thought up a surprisingly innocuous way of preventing him from taking any action.

She called it, "aggressive small talk." Simply put, she planned on getting in his face, being super pleasant, if super loud, and essentially drawing enough attention to them both that he couldn't pull any funny stunts with so many people watching. Besides, she could make him very uncomfortable if she hit on the right topic, like, say, that poor fellow that passed away last night.

Nimbly leaping to the ground from the back of the house, Diana circled around and began politely but firmly pushing her way through the crowd, towards the butcher.

An old Earth saying states that the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry. Diana abruptly discovered it was the case here in the Realm as well. The Acrobat was, if nothing else, highly recognizable, and when the butcher caught a glimpse of her heading his way, he immediately remembered her as one of the strangers who had come into his shop a few days before.

He suspected they were up to something then, just as he knew they were up to something now. True, he wasn't sure exactly what. But now that his brother was safely out of the danger zone, the younger butcher knew he had to act quickly.

"STOP THEM!" he shouted, bringing Diana up short in surprise before she could attempt to small-talk him. "Those boys! They'll bring the curse down on us! And they've fooled our own people into helping them!"

"What?" Diana stammered, clearly taken aback. "No! You've got it all wrong!"

She should have never given the butcher the opening. He knew too well how to twist it to his advantage. Already igniting concerned murmurs in the crowd, the man turned on her and shouted, "YOU! You're one of them! Stop her! They're bringing the curse on us! They're going to burn our homes!"

Diana didn't have time to move, she was so surprised. Hands clamped down on her arms from behind, attempting to pin her. She heard a few ugly comments shouted from other people in the crowd who must have believed the butcher, and ground her teeth in frustration. As honed as her muscles were, she could have broken their weak grips easily, but she knew better than to fight back and possibly incite a riot now, at the worst possible time. All she could do was shout, "You're making a big mistake!"

The growing tension of their audience was palpable as far away as Presto's magic circle. "Great. More trouble," Eric whispered as he felt the crowd turning against them.

**ooo**

_SLAM!_

Startled, Sheila flinched at the sound, then leapt into the furthest, most unused corner she could find when the banging door rattled the front of the shop. Quickly checking herself to make sure she was still invisible, she stood absolutely still, barely daring to breathe.

_I'm not here, you don't notice me, you can't see me ... _

The elder of the two brothers, who Sheila thought of as the butcher - as opposed to the younger, who to her was the butcher's assistant - ran frantically into the room, eyes wild. He looked around for just a moment, causing Sheila a thrill of panic, but by sheer luck or by his distracted state, he did not notice that the room had been recently and carefully searched.

Throwing open a cabinet, he pulled out a wide, shallow bowl forged from some plain, dull metal. Practically pitching it on the table, he splashed in a large amount of water from a hurriedly unstoppered jug. Then he took a pinch of tiny, brown flakes from a small jar, which Sheila had noticed during her search and had assumed were either spices or possibly snuff. Crumbling the flakes into the water, he said three words in a language that Sheila couldn't possibly have identified even if she had wanted to.

"My Lord! My Lord!" he then spoke urgently as he gazed into the bowl. "My Lord, it's your servant Tormod. Please, my Lord, this is urgent!"

There was a rippling sound, a slight burble of water being stirred, though the butcher - Tormod, Sheila assumed - never touched the bowl. From her angle, she could not see what was happening in the shallow dish, and she didn't dare move a muscle to creep closer. She could guess, though. Here was the secret method of communication she'd been looking for, a magic mirror, of sorts. Since it was made out of water, she hadn't recognized its component parts, but the concept was not unfamiliar. Presto would probably tell her that whoever this Tormod was trying to contact had a similar setup on the other end, and it was very likely that the water would have come from the same source to make the connection the strongest.

And then, there was a voice. A voice that was not the butcher's. Just the sound of it made Sheila shudder, and she had no desire to see the visage that owned it. Though it seemed far away, as though spoken through a long tunnel, the heavy voice held the deadly rasp of a man gargling iron filings.

"Tormod," it rasped. "I assume this is important. Speak quickly."

"My Lord, there's pretenders here," Tormod answered. Sheila could see he was beginning to sweat. "Children, really. Right this moment, they're in the town square for everyone to see, putting on some sort of ritual what they claim will break your curse!"

"WHAT?" demanded the ugly voice from the dish. "That is impossible! They are fooling themselves as well as everyone else! Unless ... do they know?"

"I can't say, Master," Tormod replied quickly. "But whether they do or not, in just a few minutes, they're gonna have everyone convinced they can leave this place!"

The voice on the other end swore violently, then marshaled itself and commanded, "So these newcomers seek to disrupt my work in Dastirum? No matter. Those foolish enough to stoke even the faintest embers of hope shall find it stamped out under my heel. Hinder them in any way possible. Let no one believe they can escape. I will arrive shortly."

"Yes, my Lord!" Tormod saluted, then turned and dashed out of the shop as fast as he'd come in. The door banged shut, the sound of running feet retreated down the street, and Sheila counted to ten before she was willing to let out the breath she'd been holding.

Still invisible, the Thief slowly crept forward, stealing nervous glances at the front door along the way, until she was next to the table and able to peer cautiously into the dish that the butcher had abandoned. She saw nothing more than a bowl full of water with some soggy brown bits floating in it. No horrible, angry face of unknown description. Well, what had she been expecting? Obviously, the Duke of Darkness had more important things to be doing than standing around staring at a puddle of water waiting for someone on the other end to say hello.

Then again, had it truly been the Duke? Sheila frowned at that, realizing that during that entire conversation, she'd heard neither the word "Duke" nor "Darkness." But who else could it have been? It certainly hadn't sounded like Venger, and as far as she knew, no one else had any interest in this town. It had to have been the Duke. And if it was, that meant he was coming here any minute now. She knew she had only scant moments to do something about it.

Bobby. There was a fight about to begin, and Bobby was going to be in the thick of it. She trusted that Hank and the others could hold their own in a fight, but her little brother could get pretty crazy sometimes, and put himself right in the heart of danger without realizing it until it was too late. He had instructions, but couldn't always be counted on to obey them to the letter. She had to make sure he didn't do something to get himself hurt.

Cautiously opening the shop's front door, Sheila looked both ways before quietly slipping out into the open air. This town always smelled rotten to her, but somehow, it was preferable to the stench of greed and corruption in the butchers' shop.

She crossed the street, walked about two dozen yards and, deciding she was a safe distance away, tossed back her hood to become visible once again. Apprehensively, she looked around and listened carefully. No explosions. No earthquakes. No screams of panic and terror. So the Duke wasn't here yet. There was still time, then. Maybe she could get to the plaza, warn the others, then get out there with Bobby and keep an eye on him before things got too dangerous ...

"You! Girl!"

Sheila literally jumped, then turned quickly, looking guilty and startled. How distracted had she been, that she never saw this ragged man on the street until he was practically upon her? He looked angry as he advanced on her, but Sheila could not tell what had upset him so, or whether she was the source of his anger at all. "Y-yes?"

"Just what do you think you're doing?" he demanded forcefully, looming at least a head and shoulders taller than her, intimidating her just with his angry presence. Hands on his hips, feet planted firmly, his body language demanded an immediate answer despite his near-skeletal appearance.

"I ..." she began, thinking quickly around her rising level of fear. She was desperately considering just pulling up her hood and running. "My brother, I'm trying to find my brother ..."

"No, girl, I mean, what are you doing with that?" he insisted with obvious anger, pointing to something in Sheila's hand. She looked down quickly, and felt her stomach sink into her boots. She was still holding the silver toasting chalice that she'd first pulled out of the bag of loot. In all the excitement, she'd completely forgotten she'd been holding it and had never put it down.

"I ..." she tried weakly, but had nothing to say beyond that. This looked bad.

"I've heard there were strangers in town," he snapped. "Come to rob us blind while we suffer and die, is that it? Well, girl, you're going to regret–"

"I'm not a thief!" Sheila interrupted, then winced at the utter irony of her own statement. "I mean, I didn't steal it," she corrected herself.

Crossing his arms, the man scowled at her. "I suppose you're going to tell me you just found it somewhere?"

"I ... yes. Well, no. Not really. The butcher, Tormod, he ... I ... I needed to see him ..."

"And this is his?" the Dastirite demanded, snatching the goblet out of Sheila's hand and brandishing it at her like a weapon.

"I ... I'm not sure," Sheila admitted quietly. "I don't think so."

Suddenly, the man stopped being angry. At least, he stopped being angry at Sheila. He paused for only a moment, seemed to read her expression, then studied the goblet carefully but with an obvious, growing fury. The implication of Sheila's words had clearly not been lost on him.

"He stole this. That's what you're saying, isn't it? You didn't steal it, he did? You found it in his shop? Tormod!" he bellowed, turning abruptly and stomping in a blazing rage towards the butcher's shop. "You will answer to me!" he shouted again, banging on the door so hard that it rattled its hinges.

"I don't think he's there!" Sheila tried to explain, then attempted a different tack, trying to get the stranger to calm down. "Sir, what's your name?"

"Acharn. I am Acharn, girl. Tormod! I have questions that demand answers! And," the man named Acharn said angrily to Sheila, "if he is not inside to give them, I will see for myself what you have found."

The door wasn't locked; Sheila hadn't bothered because the butchers themselves hadn't secured it when they'd left. Acharn seemed a bit surprised when he gave it a hard jerk and it swung easily open, but Sheila supposed that in his starved and weakened state, he would have regretted having to put forth a greater effort. "Sir, please, Mr. Acharn," she called, futilely trying to stop the man from whatever he was about to do, "maybe you'd better let me explain ..."

There was a dreadful, seething pause as the man entered the front of the shop and looked around. "I see nothing, girl," he said with dark suspicion.

"I ... found it in the back room," Sheila shamefacedly felt compelled to admit. She wasn't exactly sure why she was trying to protect the men who had stolen so much more than just silver and gemstones from their suffering neighbors. But Acharn was so unreasonably angry that he seemed more than capable of meting out his own style of justice, and that frightened Sheila. No matter how horrible a person's actions, she just did not like getting people in trouble. Not like this.

Upon hearing Sheila's answer, Acharn stalked behind the counter and into the back room. There was the sound of heavy objects being moved to the side, the sloshing of water - probably the magic mirror being spilled - and then the jingling of finely wrought metal when the sacks were discovered. Through this, Sheila heavily considered just fleeing, leaving Acharn to his own righteous fury. There was a battle about to begin, and she had a brother to protect. She edged almost to the door, ready to bolt, when the man emerged from the back room with a curse. He still held the silver chalice, but now, there was an ivory figurine and something small and delicate in his other hand.

"Do you see this, girl?" he asked, showing Sheila a beaded necklace made of amber and jet. The bauble was some sort of clear, reddish stone, possibly sunstone or carnelian.

She looked, and hoped that Acharn had calmed down somewhat. "It's ... very pretty," the Thief replied cautiously, wondering what the significance of this particular piece of jewelry was.

"It was my grandmother's," Acharn continued in a quiet but deadly tone. "I recognize this stone. She meant to give it to the woman I marry, and she, in turn, would pass it to her own daughter and then her granddaughter. But my grandmother died two months ago, and this necklace disappeared before her body was even buried. And now I see why!" he shouted, his fury returning with a vengeance. "Tormod and his brother have been robbing the dead for months now! I will have words with them for this, girl! Where are they?"

"They're ..." Sheila paused, then took a deep breath to steady herself. She did not like herself at all for what she was about to do, yet as serious as the situation with the Duke was, this was exactly what they needed. What better way to keep the butchers from causing Presto and the others trouble than to keep them occupied with trouble of their own? She tried to rationalize her underhandedness by telling herself that it wasn't like they hadn't brought it upon themselves, and really, stealing from the dead was the least of the crimes the two brothers would have to answer for. "At least, I *think* they're in the town square right now."

"Then I will confront them there!" Acharn shouted, and was out the door at a dead run.

The moment Acharn was gone, a frightened and visibly trembling Sheila gasped several deep, even breaths, trying to calm herself down. That man had murder in his eyes. She hadn't seen anyone that irrationally angry since ... well, since last week when Hank lost it and decided to personally kill Venger. But that had been different. Hank was a good person and she'd always felt she could somehow reach that core of decency, even when she'd seen him at his worst. This man, this Acharn, had simply terrified her.

Quickly getting a grip on herself, Sheila dashed out of the shop in hot pursuit, realizing that while Acharn could provide the distraction they needed, he could also cause some serious harm in such a state of fury. She skidded to a halt in the middle of the cobblestone pavement, looking quickly up and down the street in confusion.

She'd only delayed herself in the shop by a few moments, but Acharn was already gone.

**ooo**

Having just finished walking the Circle with the burning stick of kindling, Presto waved the flames out and, at the same time, noticed the commotion in the crowd of onlookers. He frowned slightly, squinting at the person who seemed to be the instigator, and recognized the large man immediately. It was no surprise to him that it was the same person who had accosted him at the gates two days ago. Not, as he had originally presumed, to keep him from calling down the curse, but more likely to keep him from accidentally discovering there was never a curse in the first place.

Now, the man was giving Diana some serious trouble. Quickly glancing to either side of him, Presto could see that Hank and Eric were both aware of the situation and desperately frustrated that they could not safely leave their posts to do something about it. But even from here, there was something that Presto knew he could do.

"SILENCE THAT MAN, OR YOU WILL NEVER BE FREE!" he shouted, imbuing it with as much confidence as he could. His voice came out so commanding that it almost didn't sound like his own. "THERE MUST BE NO INTERRUPTIONS!"

Some of the Dastirites that had been trying to detain Diana looked concerned at this; they were the ones who had encountered one or more of these young strangers in the past few days. They hesitated, thinking about what they were doing. A few of them remembered the food the strangers had given away upon entering the town, others remembered speaking to them earnestly about how the curse might be broken. Either way, the Magician's words hit home. If there was even the slightest hope that his magic would free them, they wanted him to have the chance to work it.

On the other hand, the butcher saw he was losing the crowd, and knew he could not let rationality take hold. "YOU be silent!" he shouted back at Presto. "I won't stand here and let you destroy us this way!" Rounding on Diana, who was still permitting herself to be pinned, he accused, "You children poisoned the well, didn't you? It's you what destroyed our gardens, our only hope against starving-"

"That's enough, Uisdean," a familiar voice interrupted tiredly.

Diana looked as surprised as the butcher, whose name appeared to be Uisdean, and they both turned their heads towards a man who had laid a weakly restraining hand on the butcher's arm.

Diana smiled broadly. It was Jakarth.

"You can't be serious!" Uisdean raved at the thinner man. "You can't possibly believe these children mean anything but destroying us!"

More people were coming out of doors now; if Presto's magical ritual hadn't piqued their curiosity, all the shouting had certainly caught their attention.

"I ain't quite been sure what I believe," Jakarth admitted. "I mighta heard you out until you started in on the gardens." Turning away from the butcher entirely, Jakarth addressed one of the men holding Diana's arms. "Let her go, Seoras. You too, Nairich. She ain't done nothing."

"But ..." the man named Seoras said in confusion, looking between Jakarth and the butcher. "Uisdean just said ..."

"Said what?" Jakarth sighed. "That her and her friends been destroying the gardens? That don't make no sense. Gardens all been dying, how long now?"

"Dunno, four, five months?" Seoras guessed. "Ever since the Duke o' Darkness cursed them."

"Right, and she an' her friends only been here a few days. I saw them come into town myself," Jakarth reasoned quietly. Momentarily taken aback, Seoras seemed to see the conclusion that Jakarth was reaching, and he, at least, rather shamefacedly let go of Diana's arm. "Like I said, she ain't done nothing. Couldn't have. Not to the gardens, anyway." Turning to address the sputtering, livid butcher, Jakarth continued sadly, "Sometimes I don't know where you get your ideas, Uisdean."

Glad beyond words that they'd made a friend who would come to her rescue now, Diana nodded her thanks to Jakarth, then turned her attention wholly on her accuser. If that's the way he wanted it, well, two could play his little game. Ignoring the fact that the other man, Nairich, was still gripping her upper arm and refusing to let go, Diana looked the butcher in the eye and said, "What I'd like to know is where he got the idea that someone is doing something to destroy the gardens. I thought it was a curse that was killing them." Then, smiling sweetly, she added, "Unless you know something we don't?"

Uisdean goggled at her, speechless. She knew. That was the only reason she could have said what she did. For the life of him, he couldn't see how she'd found out, but she knew.

The hand that had been holding Diana's other arm dropped away hesitantly, and she shook the freed limb with relief. She glared at the man called Nairich for a moment, but was satisfied when she saw that he was staring at Uisdean with a speculative expression. "So," she continued with enough sweetness to cause cavities, "why don't we all just stand here and watch quietly? I promise I won't go anywhere, so if it turns out I'm lying, you can–"

"STOP THOSE CHILDREN!"

**ooo**

"They're not paying attention," Presto whispered uncertainly as he finished tossing the dried corn about the Circle, asking the spirits of Earth to grow and replenish these lands. The shouting and commotion in their audience was growing more and more noticeable.

"Keep going," Hank whispered back. "Right now, having people watch isn't as important as getting the Duke here in the first place."

**ooo**

Diana rolled her eyes, sighing in resignation as heads snapped around, towards the new shout. If it wasn't one butcher, it was the other. The elder of the two had returned, which meant, Diana hoped, that he'd been able to send a message to the Duke of Darkness and was now trying to stall events until he arrived. She wondered vaguely if the accusations she knew he was going to level at them would be as wild as the ones his brother had come up with.

"Break their magic Circle!" the older of the butchers continued to shout, missing his brother's subtle gesture to be silent. "Can't you see? They're summoning the Duke o' Darkness himself!"

_Huh, _Diana mused. _Never expected the guy would accuse us of something we're actually trying to do ... _

The butcher trailed off, perplexed, completely baffled because no one was being incited to riot by his words. A few people looked at one another indecisively, and a couple even took a few hesitant steps towards Presto's magical display before halting uncertainly, but nothing more. Usually, mobs were easy enough for him to manipulate. All he had to do was shout various unfounded fears loudly enough, and people in large groups were quick to believe him and work themselves into a panic. It was a skill he used often in the last five months, but for the first time, he was baffled to realize it hadn't worked. He saw a few guilty looks cast in the direction of the dark-skinned beauty who was smiling at him sweetly, but he never noticed his brother's increasingly frantic gestures to shut up.

"What is wrong with you people?" he demanded. "Can't you see what they're doing? They're-"

A tall, thin figure that seemed to come out of nowhere suddenly grabbed the butcher from behind, spinning him around and slamming his back hard against the nearest wall. "Tormod!" he shouted as the surprised butcher tried to catch his breath. "You will answer to me!"

"Who are y–"

"What is the meaning of this?" Acharn cut him off, fearlessly and angrily shoving the silver chalice in the beefier man's face. Tormod stared at it, almost cross-eyed from its closeness. It took him a moment to realize where his assailant must have gotten the treasure he was brandishing, but when he figured it out, he blanched visibly.

"They were ... I ... they were ..." he stammered, trying to think up a good explanation, but as he stalled for time, a scraggly waif of a woman stepped forward from the knot of onlookers.

"Lemme see that," she said in a quiet but firm tone. Tormod was visibly frightened, but Acharn seemed perfectly calm as he handed the chalice to the woman, who inspected it carefully. There was engraving around the base, and as she read it, her lips pressed together in a straight line, her eyes narrowing in fury. "This," she said quietly, "was the chalice what my husband and me drank from at our wedding. It was a gift from a noble Lady o' Yarfell. The day my husband died, it was gone by the time I got back from burying his body! How'd you come across this, Tormod?"

"They stole it all! Look!" Acharn answered for the butcher, displaying the ivory statuette, which was quickly recognized by someone towards the edge of the crowd as having belonged to his deceased sister. "In their shop, there are bags of treasures! Family heirlooms!" He held up the necklace. "They have been stealing from the dead since this has begun!"

"No, wait! It's not what you think!" Tormod tried to explain, as several people raised murmurs and shouts about other family treasures that had disappeared upon a death. The butcher could see what was happening, and was absolutely terrified to experience being on the other end of a growing mob scene for the first time.

"I think you fools have been profiting from our suffering!" Acharn shouted back.

With emotions running high and all attention focused on his brother, Uisdean grabbed the opportunity and bolted.

"HEY!" Diana shouted, the only one who had been keeping an eye on the younger brother. "Somebody stop him!"

Four people gave chase, though it was obvious that in their starved states, none of them would be able to run for long and had no hope of catching their quarry. However, it was the distraction Tormod needed. Throwing a punch at Acharn and missing entirely, he dodged away from the man and ran as fast as he could, with seven more people in hot pursuit.

"Dammit!" shouted Diana in frustration. With a leap and some quick Staff work, she was up and running on the nearest rooftop, wondering how she was supposed to keep an eye on both men at once when they'd run in opposite directions.

**ooo**

Both butchers were on the run with a dozen or more pursuers dogging their heels, but a sufficient number of desperate and curious people still remained to watch the Magician who promised to free them from the curse. More and more were arriving by the moment, daring to hope for the first time in months. At least now, without the possibility of Tormod and his brother interfering, the young Wizard stood a real chance of success in what he was attempting.

Now that his self-appointed task was completed, Acharn quietly wandered away from the growing spectacle of the curse supposedly being broken.

Casually, he glanced at the necklace he still held, which he had, in all honesty, grabbed at random from the sacks of treasure the butchers had stolen. He was actually rather proud of the story he'd made up on the spot, about it belonging to his grandmother. Truly, he had no idea who it belonged to, nor did he care. In fact, he decided to keep it for himself, since amber was a substance often used in spell work.

The Duke's spies had been dealt with. As word spread about the thefts they had committed, they would find no safe haven in this town and eventually would be caught. They would cause no more inconvenience today, or any other day. All that was left was the Duke of Darkness himself, and without his spies to stir up trouble that might tip the balance in his favor, the Young Ones would be perfectly capable of dealing with him themselves.

It had almost been too easy. Satisfied, Acharn smiled.

Or, more correctly, Venger smiled.

**ooo**

"Here is that which represents the power that binds these lands," Presto intoned as the last part of his ritual. After this, he was out of ideas, so if the Duke didn't show up now, he had nothing else to get him here. Holding up the length of cord, he tied a knot in it, then brought the ends together, slipping the loop around the blade of the knife that he held in his right hand. Stretching his skinny arms above his head as high as he could reach, so that the blade shone brightly in the morning suns, he shouted as dramatically as possible, "As I sever this knot, so too shall I sever the bonds that strangle this fair city!" In one clean motion, he sliced the cord in two. "It is done! Extinguish your candles, the curse is-"

"HEADS UP!" Eric suddenly bellowed, nearly causing Presto to drop to his knees in shock.

"I see them!" Hank shouted back, his Bow already raised and an arrow drawn.

Fireballs. Three of them, streaking directly towards them from high in the sky, leaving thick trails of greasy black smoke in their wake.

"Collin! Everybody!" Eric ordered their four helpers as screams began to erupt from the onlookers. "Get closer! Under my Shield! Now!"

Scrambling, dropping their candles in their haste while taking up what few weapons they had, the four Dastirites darted closer to the altar despite the instinctive urge to run as far and as fast as they could. None of them knew what was going to happen next, but they put their trust in their new friends' confidence. Before any of this had begun this morning, they had all sworn to implicitly obey any orders from Presto, Hank, or Eric.

"Steady ..." Eric assured everyone quietly. He had his Shield partially raised, but its power was not activated yet. Instead, he, and everyone else, watched Hank as he stood as still as a statue, arrow aimed upwards, utterly focused on the incoming fireballs as they rushed closer.

Eric tensed when he saw Hank's eyes narrow slightly, a sure sign that he was ready to fire. Otherwise, there was no warning before the Ranger shouted "NOW!" and fired three arrows in rapid succession. The last arrow had barely left its nock before Eric swung his Shield up the rest of the way. Its power flared into an orangish dome that almost exactly matched the circumference marked by Presto's magic Circle.

Fire cannot destroy fire, but it certainly causes a great conflagration when flaming projectiles meet head-on. Three fireballs, struck by arrows shot by nothing less than a Weapon of Power, exploded in a display of fireworks that was visible for miles in broad daylight. What had, just the moment before, been balls of flaming debris the size of boulders burst into thousands of tiny, burning bits no larger than a child's marble. Most of them extinguished themselves long before they rained down on the protective aura of the Shield, and those that were still burning bounced harmlessly to the inflammable cobblestones.

There was a long moment of utter silence. Slowly, those Dastirites who had dived for cover began to peek out, realizing incredulously that they were not dead, and not even harmed in the slightest. Nothing was burning. Their town had not been leveled.

From under the Shield's protection, there came an ecstatic, shocked laugh. It sounded like Baris. And, as everyone truly began to comprehend what had happened, Presto seized the moment. "Behold!" he shouted in that mature tone that didn't sound like the gawky teenager they all knew. "The curse has no power any more!"

"Where the hell is he?" Eric whispered in frustration as Presto continued to work the crowd. The Duke should have appeared by now.

"He's here somewhere," Hank replied in an equal whisper. "Just keep your Shield ... oh, SHI-"

The rest of Hank's surprised exclamation was fortunately drowned out by a thunderous blast and the violent crackle of electricity exploding dangerously around them. Eric staggered visibly when they were struck, but the Shield held the powerful surge at bay.

"Lightning," Presto gasped through the overwhelming scent of ozone. The Duke was going to try everything, wasn't he? "Look out, here comes another one!" he shouted when the sky darkened briefly again.

"Crap!" Eric muttered, starting to sweat as he braced himself just in time. Again, the explosive force crackled all around them, shaking the cobblestones outside the Circle, but those inside the safety of the Shield were protected from the charge. "I think my arm went numb," he said through gritted teeth. Holding the Shield around them felt harder than it should have been.

"Hold fast, friend," Collin said. Not only was he alarmed by the lightning, but he was terribly confused. Hadn't the Magician just said the curse had no power any more? Obviously it had, if this sudden storm was any indication, and he knew the only thing keeping them alive at this moment was the fortitude of the young man with the Shield.

An earthquake would be next, and Presto realized that the only chance the town would have of surviving it would be to stop it before it happened. Not knowing what else to do, his voice cracking in desperation, he shouted at the sky, "The Duke of Darkness has no power here! His curse is broken! His lightning is weak! His fireballs are nothing! The Duke of Darkness is nothing! I have freed this land, and if the Duke of Darkness wants to reclaim it, he'll have to face me directly!"

No sooner had the last word left Presto's mouth, when there was another violent clap of thunder, but instead of lightning, there came a dazzling burst of starry, indigo light. At the center of the fading flash loomed a sinister figure that brought gut-wrenching fear to those that had seen it before. Humanoid, wearing spiked and savage black armor, it stood mockingly above them on the top of the town's wall, pointing a clawed gauntlet directly at Presto's heart. When it spoke, the hissing, rasping sound that emitted from its macabre, grotesquely fanged helmet was the voice of a thousand graves.

"Is that so, little Mage?" the Duke of Darkness sneered derisively. "Then you shall have your wish!"

**ooo**

((Author's Note: According to JRR Tolkien, "Acharn" is Sindarin Elvish for "vengeance." In a rather ironic way, Venger was making a joke.))


	10. The Duke of Darkness

**Dastirum**

Chapter 10: The Duke of Darkness

**ooo**

"Eep," Presto squeaked, his carefully constructed facade of confidence crumbling as he looked upon the Duke of Darkness for the first time. The man was every bit as hideous and intimidating as had been described, and the mere sight of him caused a screaming panic in those Dastirites who were near enough to see.

The seven behind the makeshift altar stood their ground with varying levels of resolve in the face of their enemy. Hank already had an arrow trained on the Duke, while Baris and Collin readied their weapons, even if they were only good for close-range fighting. Corheen held her hands up in a strangely paused gesture, obviously having some sort of spell at the tip of her tongue, despite looking about as certain of herself as Presto did. Sora, the only one who was clearly not a fighter and had no useful skills to contribute to this confrontation, realized she was way out of her element and did her best to hide behind Eric's Shield, which was in the forefront, protecting them all.

"Foolish, foolish children," the Duke rasped mockingly from his towering perch atop the wall. "You seek to break the curse on this town? You have only hastened its destruction!" In one hand, he held a deep purple ball the size of a melon, but the other remained empty as he raised it over his head. His fingers glowed with the magic at his command. "I will reduce this town to ash for your insolence!"

Just as the Duke finished speaking, there was a highly localized earthquake. Only, it was neither of his making nor under his control. He looked more surprised than anyone when the wall he was standing on bucked wildly with a crashing rumble. It caused him to lose his footing when Bobby, who had been waiting unnoticed, hidden in the shrubbery outside the town, struck the wall directly beneath the Duke with his Club. The man lost his footing and lurched forward with a shout, hitting the ground with a sickening crunch following a twenty-foot drop.

That had been the plan. The Duke of Darkness was less likely to attack the town when he himself was inside it.

No sooner had the Duke crashed to the cobblestones when Baris and Collin leapt forward with angry shouts that let out more than five months of pent-up rage and helplessness at their tormentor. Hank was already firing rapidly, trying to trap the Duke in a web of arrows before he could get up.

"Get out of here!" Eric shouted to Sora, knowing she did not belong in the heat of a battle. "Get those people under control before someone gets hurt! I'll cover you!" Sora nodded, understanding the situation fully, and ran with all her might towards the panicking Dastirites who had been their audience. Eric stayed just a few steps behind her, keeping his Shield turned towards the Duke, until she had reached a minimum of safety. Then, he turned and charged after Baris and Collin. The only thought in his mind was to get the teleportation Sphere away from the Duke of Darkness.

**ooo**

Upon hearing the lightning after seeing the fireballs explode in the sky, Sheila forgot all about finding Acharn, however he'd gotten away from her so quickly, and just ran as fast as she could towards the plaza. A street or two further, she was nearly trampled by screaming townspeople running in terror in the opposite direction. She couldn't make out any of the words they were shrieking in all the panic and confusion, but she didn't need to. The Duke of Darkness was here, of that, she was certain.

The panic and confusion were even worse in the town square. Sheila didn't bother taking the time to look for the Duke of Darkness, assuming that Hank and the others were on top of the situation and praying that Bobby was keeping himself safe. Instead, she spotted the young woman she'd briefly met this morning, Sora, working her hardest to render aid to those Dastirites who had been injured in the panicked stampede, and others who were frozen and nearly comatose with fear.

"I'm here, I'm here, let me help!" Sheila called out to her, opening the pouch on her belt as she ran to Sora's assistance. Pulling out the Healing Net that she'd acquired in the Dragon's Graveyard, she quickly draped it over the nearest prone body she could reach, that of a man who had ben knocked down and trampled in the initial panic. "What's happening?" she demanded of Sora as the Net glowed and went to work on the man's injuries.

"I ain't sure if the curse is broken or not," Sora answered as she helped a deeply shocked, fearfully gibbering woman sit upright. "But the Duke of Darkness is here now, and he don't look happy about it at all."

**ooo**

The Duke was already imprisoned in a cage of golden arrows, and Eric and the others were almost on top of him when something erupted from the ground. In fact, it was the ground itself, lurching upwards and forming a solid, protective dome around the Duke. It bulged and grew like a stony bubble, forcing Hank's meshed arrows back and away until the glowing web lost its integrity with an explosion of yellow flame.

Dodging the wild burst of energy, Baris was the first to reach the earthen shield. It was true that the Sword he now wielded could cut through anything; in just a few quick swings he'd reduced solid rock to so much rubble.

No sooner than he had made the first cut, though, when there was a brilliantly dark flash of starry blue from inside. The Duke of Darkness's magic had somewhat protected him during his fall, and he had only needed those few extra seconds of safety beneath the stony dome to recover himself from the impact. By the time Baris had cut through, he had already raised the Sphere and teleported away.

"You will die for this mockery!" the gravelly shout came from above and behind them, and everyone in the square whirled around quickly. The Duke had reappeared on the balcony of the most stately building in the area, the damaged and abandoned Mayor's office. "Your foolish ploy has only brought m ... mm ... mmphf!" he suddenly gagged desperately, completely and inexplicably unable to speak.

Standing next to Corheen, Presto just stared at the young woman in admiration, trying to remember the complicated gesture she'd made. And she thought her magic was useless? He would pay good money to learn that silencing spell!

Corheen noticed his open look, and gave the Magician a self-depricating half-smile. "That's why my husband never argues with me," she offered by way of explanation, but Presto never got the chance to make a witty reply.

"DIE!" the Duke roared, powering his way through the relatively minor spell. His free hand lit up with a crackling, purplish-white energy.

There was little time to react as the Duke's magic lashed out at the troublemakers. Eric, having run to the earthen dome where the Duke had been temporarily trapped, was now on the opposite end of the town square with no chance of getting his Shield between Presto and the blast of lightning. Hank was firing arrows as fast as he could, but they did not have the same effect on pure electricity they way they had on the more substantial fireballs. Corheen screamed and flung herself to the ground, and all Presto could do was reflexively throw his arms up in front of his face to try to protect himself as the lightning struck.

**ooo**

_What am I doing? _Diana thought to herself as she screeched to a halt on the peak of a mossy roof. Screams and explosions reached her ears. Why was she trying to keep an eye on these creeps anyway, when there was a battle being fought?

_Screw it_, she decided, ready to leave the butchers to the mercy of their fellow townsfolk. Each of the men had run a different direction and had, so far, outrun their pursuers, but they were as good as caught if they didn't get out of this town soon. She was about to resign them to their fate and run to do her share of the fighting when she saw, by complete coincidence, the two traitorous brothers run into each other in a greasy alley not far away. She watched as they stopped, recognized one another, then scrambled behind a blind corner to make sure they were hidden from view. Obviously they were frantically trying to regroup and come up with a plan to save their own skins. No one on the street would have seen their hiding place, but again, they forgot to look up and never saw Diana springing lightly from roof to roof, getting close enough to overhear them.

"... and beg him for mercy, and when he stops leveling the town, people gonna think we're heroes for saving them!" the younger of the two was saying.

"An' maybe more people would surrender along with us, and then he can have this town and all this bunk will be over!" the elder brother, Tormod agreed. "Let's do it quick!" Having reached this agreement, the two of them checked the street quickly, making sure they had not been found, then ran through the back alleys and unused lanes, as unseen as possible, as they hurried towards the sound of fighting.

_You're going to trick people into thinking they have to surrender to save themselves?_ Diana thought furiously. _Not on my watch, you won't! _

**ooo**

With a thunderous roar, the lightning flashed blindingly towards Presto, crackling with deadly power that aimed to strike him fully in the chest ...

... and it did not harm him in the least.

"What?" the Duke of Darkness bellowed in fury and utter confusion. The lightning was just ... gone.

"Huh?" Eric put voice to his own confusion.

"The knife ..." Corheen said incredulously, meaning the knife that Presto had found in the Dragon's Graveyard, which he had still been holding when the Duke appeared. Though she'd been on the ground trying to protect herself from the blast, she had still managed to see what happened. "It swallowed the lightning! It drew all the magic inside itself!"

Said knife, or rather, Knife, was now being juggled by its owner like a hot potato. "I know, I know!" he squeaked, barely able to hold the Weapon of Power from the sheer aura of sudden energy that made his fingers buzz. "It feels like the whole bolt is inside it! Get it out! Get it out!"

Hank was just as amazed as anyone else, but having watched Presto in action earlier, he knew how to seize the moment. "Your magic is nothing, Duke!" he shouted loudly enough for their few remaining witnesses to hear, drawing attention away from Presto's obvious surprise. "Did you see that? You have no power here!"

In point of fact, the Duke had been wondering that very thing. Dumbfounded, he stood staring, probably gaping beneath his monstrous helmet. He therefore had no time to raise the Sphere and teleport out of the way when, with one last shout of "Get it out!" Presto somehow managed to release all the power the Knife was storing in one gigantic blast.

The huge explosion of pure energy rocketed out of the blade and slammed squarely into the Duke, throwing him hard against the wall supporting the balcony. He landed awkwardly, flopping over the low railing, and once again fell a considerable distance to the ground. Before he could get an earthen shield up this time, he was immediately set upon by Baris, Collin, and a strange Barbarian child who seemed to come running out of nowhere, joining the fight because he couldn't stand being left out of the action any more.

For a moment, Presto just stared at the Knife he held, comprehending what had happened. The blade had drawn the energy of the Duke's magic into itself and kept it to be used again_. It must be like an occult lightning rod attached to a rechargeable battery, _his mind reasoned rapidly. _It absorbs and stores any magical energy that was nearby. That's why it felt like I was being drawn into it when I tried to use magic to figure out its power. That's why- _

"Take it!" Presto suddenly shrieked when realization dawned, almost flinging the Knife at Corheen. "I don't want it! It's been draining the power out of my Hat all this time!"

Surprised, Corheen accepted the Knife that was frantically shoved into her hands, wondering what the Wizard meant about his Hat. She never got the chance to ask, because the Duke of Darkness, prone on the ground and about to be pummeled by several assailants, disappeared in a flash of indigo only to reappear a second later at a higher vantage point, this time atop the mound of rubble that had once been the spire of the Temple of the Stars.

"I have every power imaginable here!" the Duke shouted back to Hank's earlier challenge. "You self-proclaimed saviors have done me no harm! I will-"

_CLANG!_

The Duke staggered, momentarily dazed by the loud and painful impact of a rock squarely on his helmeted forehead.

Collin, the closest to Bobby, looked down at the kid with admiration for his throwing arm and near-perfect aim. Taking his cue, the Dastirite bent down for his own supply of rubble, and the two of them launched a barrage that the Duke had no hope of dodging, especially when Hank fired a long, trailing arrow that wrapped itself around the Duke like a snake. Bound, his arms pinned to his sides, the Duke roared in fury as the rocks hit him. His armor mostly projected him from the projectiles, but the jolts they meted out were still painful.

_CLANG!_

_CLANG!_

_BA-WHOOOOOMMM!_

The Duke was consumed by a roaring blast of flame that would have equaled any of his own fireballs. All eyes turned to Presto, but though he had his Hat open and his hand over it in preparation, the magic had not been his. He himself was staring dumbfounded at Corheen.

Corheen, for her part, was gazing at the Knife in her hand with a smile worthy of a kid at Yule. She had never been able to grow beyond the lowest level of magic use because she had never been able to focus her power properly. Now, she had just been given a gift that focused it for her. The raw firepower which blasted the Duke had been hers, the Knife had merely gathered it up and pointed it in the right direction.

"I ... think you got him," Presto ventured, realizing the Duke was nowhere to be seen. Had Corheen incinerated the man? Was the battle really over so quickly?

"Presto!" a familiar voice from above called, and the Magician turned around and looked up quickly. Diana was there on the roof of the Mayor's office, the same building the Duke had used just minutes before. "Quick! The butchers are going to cause us a lot more trouble if we let them get away!"

**ooo**

Following the traitorous butchers, Diana had been able to easily see where they were going and already knew what they were planning. Because they were trying to avoid being seen, the two brothers were taking a more circuitous route to the town square, which delayed them considerably. By running along the rooftops, Diana was quickly able to gain the lead and arrive in plenty of time to do something to stop them.

Diana had heard several screams and explosions in the plaza, so she was certain the Duke of Darkness had arrived. Much to her surprise, when she vaulted onto the rooftop of the most stately building in this entire town, the Duke was nowhere to be seen. Her friends were there, in varying levels of confusion and battle-readiness, and almost directly below her was Presto, watching one of the Dastirite women with a stunned expression. Had they already won, and she'd missed all the action?

"Presto!" she called, immediately jerking the Magician out of his stupor. "Quick! The butchers are going to cause us a lot more trouble if we let them get away!"

"I can't deal with that right now!" Presto shouted back, then immediately reversed himself as an idea visibly struck him. "Oh, wait ... maybe I can! Corheen, I don't know if you got the Duke or not, if you didn't, if he's still here, don't let him teleport away. Um, Baris! Come with me!"

"What? But ..." the innkeeper's son stammered, not wanting to leave the battle. The others were looking around frantically, hoping it was over but knowing it couldn't have been that easy. He'd heard Hank say that he thought he'd felt the arrow loosen right before Corheen's blast struck, which meant the Duke might have teleported just in the nick of time. Where he'd gone, no one could tell. Perhaps he had retreated. On the chance that he had not, Baris wanted to stay and fight, but the promise he'd made to obey all orders won out in the end. "Very well. What d'you want me to do?"

"Which way?" Presto asked Diana, craning his neck to see her on the rooftop.

"Follow me!" Diana answered, lightly leaping over a gap between buildings that would have been far too wide for anyone else. "They're coming fast!"

**ooo**

"What's going on?"

Sheila glanced uneasily at her Dastirite counterpart, then went back to alternately looking for the Duke and prioritizing the severity of the wounded in their makeshift triage. "I ... don't know," she answered uncertainly. "I can't see where the Duke went."

"Pray he don't come over here," Sora answered grimly. At the moment, she was the one wielding the Net to heal the injured. Sheila had turned it over a few minutes ago when several of the walking wounded had taken shelter in a nearby building, which had been the tavern before the ale and spirits all ran dry. It wasn't the smartest thing for them to have done, and the Thief had gone in after them, convincing them that hiding inside a building was unsafe so close to a battle. One stray lightning bolt, and the entire structure could come down around their ears and crush them in the debris. Sheila had managed to persuade the least-injured amongst them to hide at a greater distance, behind a building rather than inside one, while sending the more seriously wounded to Sora for aid.

Sora's knowledge of healing mostly amounted to common home remedies, and all the medical training that Sheila had came down to First Aid certification through the Red Cross, but between the two of them and the Net, they had gotten more than a dozen gravely wounded people back on their feet. Many of them had taken their good advice and quickly fled from the battle, but some of them remained. They, and a few brave souls who had cautiously returned to watch as the fighting continued, found the safest places they could to observe the outcome, hoping to see the Duke of Darkness beaten. They wanted to learn for themselves if they'd truly been freed from the curse.

Sheila was not entirely pleased with the risks the people were taking, but as much as she wanted to shoo them to safety, she held her tongue and let them watch the battle unfold. She knew there would be no point in staging an elaborate defeat of the Duke of Darkness if there was no one here to witness it.

**ooo**

The Duke of Darkness was laughing now. He had never before realized how amusing it was to torment one's enemies in such a personal manner instead of incinerating them from afar.

Once he understood that this small pocket of resistance could not be cowed by the overwhelming threat of his mere presence, he'd wised up to the way they fought. After that blast from the Knife which had nearly roasted him alive, the Duke had simply teleported outside the city walls and stayed there for half a minute, giving his opponents the false impression that he'd been defeated. Then, just as they were letting their guard down, he abruptly reappeared in their midst, blasting away with lightning and magic missiles and any other power at his disposal. Realizing he could not let his opponents form a cohesive defense and fight like a team, he used the Sphere to teleport swiftly and randomly around the town square. He only stayed in one place long enough to get off one or two good shots before disappearing and then reappearing somewhere else. But oh, how entertaining it was to watch those fools frantically trying to figure out where he was, and then scattering before the brunt of his next bolt of lightning. He was always one jump ahead of them, picking away at them before they could form any cohesive defense. They were wearing down slowly but surely, with no way to catch up, no hope of stopping him.

The game, however, was ceasing to be quite so amusing. Several times, the boy with the Shield had been able to make a miraculous save of one of his fellows. Even more infuriating, three times now, the bolt of energy that he was so sure would have hit its target was diverted and absorbed by the girl with the Knife, who then threw it right back at him. True, he'd managed to mete out several injuries upon his opponents, and had blasted the stocky Dastirite's round shield to splinters, but it seemed like he received twice as many blows in return. Worse was the fact that he himself was tiring and running out of energy. Already he could feel that his magical bolts were not as powerful as they should have been. The tide was turning again, but he would not allow any of them to gain the upper hand. It was time to end this charade and put the town of Dastirum back in its place once and for all, and he was going to do it on the terms these children had already established.

**ooo**

Hoping to circumvent the thickest gathering of onlookers as they rushed to throw the town upon the dubious mercy of the Duke of Darkness, Uisdean and Tormod looped around an empty street, dashed between two buildings, turned down another alley ...

... and were suddenly blocked by an eight-foot tall wall of solid masonry that loomed immediately in front of them. The brothers skidded to a halt, stopping themselves just short of slamming into it, and stared in confusion and alarm. This wall had never been here before, but here it was, more solid than almost anything else in the entire town. It even had little stone gargoyles on top, sticking out their tongues mockingly.

In a rush of panic, the two men turned, attempting to flee back the way they came. They were brought up short by the sight of two people blocking their path. One was the skinny, self-styled Magician who was the root of all their problems. The other was the son of the innkeeper, who had often come to their shop to buy roasts and chickens for the inn's ever-active kitchen, in the times before the Duke of Darkness had quietly sought the butchers out and made his offer.

Baris had what appeared to be a plain sword, and gripped it like a novice. The Magician was holding something that looked like a pointy green sack. Neither appeared to be a particular threat, so the butchers both thought they could easily fight their way past these two and escape.

They each took a step towards their would-be captors, raising their fists and ready to fight, either too confident or too desperate to be visibly concerned about the bladed weapon Baris wielded. They got no further than that first step, though, before the Magician in green waved his hand over the strange sack and said something that neither man could quite hear. A yellow glow inside the hat erupted with a vengeance, shooting up into the sky, then streaking back towards the ground behind the Magician, where it exploded and then solidified into another stone wall like the one that had blocked the butchers' way.

With both ends of the alley completely blocked, the four of them were now boxed in.

_Thump_.

More correctly, the five of them were boxed in, as the fur-clad Acrobat they had confronted in the town square dropped down from out of nowhere to join her companions, Staff extended in a defensive pose.

The butchers looked around nervously and quickly assessed how their situation had changed. They were trapped, they were technically outnumbered, their opponents had either Weapons or magic at their disposal, and at least a dozen townspeople were out there, somewhere, calling for their blood. Their list of options for getting out of this town in one piece was dwindling rapidly.

"So," the Magician said, putting the sack on his head and revealing to be a slightly misshapen Wizard's Hat. "Fancy meeting you guys here."

"We-" Tormod began, but Diana quickly cut him off.

"We have it on pretty good authority that you sold out your own people to the Duke of Darkness," she accused vehemently, before the men could start. She recognized their talent for manipulating people, so it was best to not let them have the chance of confusing Baris. "It's more than just stealing family heirlooms when people die so you can profit from all this misery. You're helping *cause* all this misery!"

Baris gave her a surprised glance, but never dropped his guard. This was the first he'd heard of traitors in their midst. "Is this true?" he demanded of the two.

"She ain't got no proof!" Tormod shouted nervously, at almost the same moment that his brother yelled, "She can't prove nothing!"

His expression hardening, Baris nodded. "But you ain't denying it. And the way you react like that says more than anything." He visibly grew angrier as the ramifications of Diana's accusation quickly sunk in. "She's telling the truth, ain't she? You're working with the Duke o' Darkness! She's telling me you helped him murder our families and you ain't denying it! WHY?" He raised the Sword, ready to lunge towards the two brothers if their answer was not satisfactory.

"Don't kill us!" Uisdean shrieked, collapsing into a ball and flinging his arms up around his head protectively. When the tables turned and they no longer had the upper hand, these men were truly cowards at heart. Tormod just screamed wordlessly, turned, and ran squarely into the stone wall. He fell to the ground, stunned for a moment before scrambling fearfully away from the advancing Swordsman.

"Baris, wait," Presto said calmly, putting a hand on the man's arm to stop him.

"What? Why?" the innkeeper's son demanded angrily. "If they had any part in all this suffering we gone through, they deserve to die for it!"

"Maybe," Presto answered thoughtfully, which caused the butchers to cower and tremble even more visibly. "But I've learned a pretty valuable lesson about that, and I'm not going down that road again." This brought a sharp, bewildered glance from Diana; Eric hadn't shared with her or anyone else his discovery of the root of Presto's depression after the Dragon's Graveyard.

"You can't just let 'em get away with this!" Baris argued vehemently, not noticing Diana's confusion.

"Oh, they won't," Presto responded with an uncharacteristically wicked smile. "But I've got a better idea than killing them. I'm gonna make an example out of them."

**ooo**

"Where is he?" Bobby wondered as the others looked around frantically. The Duke had disappeared again, and there was no sign of him on any of the rooftops, or on the wall, or any of the high vantage points he favored for sniping away at his enemies. He did not always reappear immediately after disappearing, which only served to keep his enemies even further off-balance.

"I don't know," Hank answered uneasily. "There's no way he would have just given up and–"

"There!" Collin suddenly yelled, pointing.

In just those few minutes of fighting, the defenders had gotten so accustomed to the Duke attacking from the higher ground that they forgot to look out on their own level. It was by pure chance that the Dastirite had caught a motion out of the corner of his eye that he knew didn't belong there. The Duke of Darkness had reappeared, just steps away from Presto's makeshift altar.

"Fools!" he shouted, sounding uncomfortably like Venger at that moment. "You think you have broken the curse upon this paltry town with these pathetic little tools? Behold as everything you have hoped for is destroyed!" He raised a metal-gloved hand, clearly intending to smash the altar and all it symbolized to pieces.

Something happened as he lunged forward. He had made the first step with a heart-stopping roar, but with the next, he jerked himself to a sudden, awkward, and precarious stop. His booted toes skidded to a halt just outside Presto's ring of red sand, and he stared at the Circle warily. For whatever reason, he was clearly afraid to cross it.

Nobody stopped to question his odd behavior because no one in the fight would let an opportunity like this pass by. Eric, the closest to the Duke, desperately hurled himself at the Sphere, trying to wrest it from its owner's hand.

He wasn't quite fast enough. Startled out of his uncertainty, the Duke saw him coming, and just as the Cavalier reached for the prize, the Sphere flashed darkly again. This time, the Duke traveled only a scant few feet.

Eric was caught completely off-guard when the Duke rematerialized right behind him, and a heavy, steel-encased arm wrapped itself tightly around his neck. "No one move or I rip his head off with my bare hands!" the Duke shouted, tightening his grip around the Cavalier's neck until his surprised hostage got the message and stopped struggling.

"Um ... yeah," Eric agreed through a squeezed windpipe. "Nobody move!"

"BE SILENT!" the Duke roared, which left Eric with a ringing right ear. Addressing himself to everyone, but looking pointedly at Hank and Corheen, who had the longer-range Weapons, he ordered in his gravelly rasp, "You will all put your Weapons down! Now!"

"Yeah," Eric agreed with a faint nod. "Better do what he says!"

Hank was only a handful of yards away from the Duke, but everything had happened too abruptly to aim and release the arrow he had drawn. For a moment, he stood frozen, watching Eric with unusual intensity. Then, slowly, making no sudden moves, he willed the arrow away, put his arms out to his sides, and dropped the Bow on the ground. "You got it," he said coldly, making sure to keep his empty hands where the Duke could see them.

"All of you!" the Duke ordered.

A beat of silence passed in which no one else moved to obey. Infuriated, the Duke tightened his arm with a harsh jerk, dragging a choked sound from the Cavalier.

"Do it, guys," Hank said over his shoulder, never taking his eyes off Eric's predicament.

Corheen and Collin looked uncertainly at one another, knowing that if they surrendered now, the Duke would take this town unresisted. Bobby glanced behind him, at Sheila, for guidance, but all he got from his sister was a worried, hesitant look. None of them felt right about this, but they had just been given an unquestionable order and they were obliged to obey it. A moment later, there came the reluctant sounds of various Weapons being dropped to the flagstones.

"All right, our Weapons are down," Hank told the Duke evenly. "Let him go."

"You think it's that simple, boy?" the Duke sneered. "If you value your friend's life, you will fall to your knees in surrender to the Duke of Darkness! Now! All of you! Everyone! Even the wounded over there and those pretty little girls trying to help them!"

"Everyone get the point?" Eric asked weakly. "Just take it slow and easy ..."

"And if we don't?" the Ranger challenged steadily.

"Then you will all die," the Duke answered simply. "Starting with this boy heaAAAARRRGHHH!"

Everything happened much too quickly to follow. Screaming in sudden pain, the Duke jerked spasmodically and abruptly released Eric. The Cavalier, for his part, spun away quickly, dragging an unfamiliar, ornate, and very bloodied knife out of the Duke's thigh as he did so. Howling, the Duke staggered backwards, clutching at his bleeding leg with his free hand. Unexpectedly wounded, and knowing his chances of winning a physical fight had just diminished to almost nothing, he raised the Sphere, visualized his stronghold hundreds of miles away ...

... and crashed to the ground when 180 pounds of defensive tackle slammed into his knees. His already wounded leg gave out completely and he landed hard, the Sphere flying from his grip on the impact. He contorted desperately, but he was half-tangled with the young Ranger who had taken him down. The boy quickly and painfully twisted his wounded leg to keep him incapacitated; he could not rise to retrieve the artifact as it rolled away.

Eric had never played high school football. Collin had never even heard of the game. But both of them knew a fumble when they saw one. Without a word, they dived for the Sphere before the Duke could recover it.

**ooo**

"An ... an example? W-what do you ... you mean?" Uisdean stammered in terror. He had no idea what the young Magician had in mind, but he certainly knew what it meant when the Duke of Darkness said he was going to make an example out of someone.

"I mean," Presto explained, "You're gonna do something special for the whole town to see. You do what I tell you, and I'll let you go."

"What?" Baris almost yelled. Now that he knew these men had betrayed their own people, there was no way he would let them escape justice. "You can't just-"

"Hang on, let's hear him out," Diana interrupted meaningfully. The Swordsman gave her a mutinous glare, ready to argue, but then he comprehended the look on the Acrobat's face and halted himself. She obviously knew where Presto was going with this.

"I don't need to hear no more," Tormod said a little too quickly in his eagerness to get away safely. "You said you'll let us go? You got a deal. What you want us to do?"

"Easy," Presto smiled. "I'll let you go ... through the gates."

The expressions on all three Dastirite faces were a matched set of confused masks. Diana just smiled approvingly.

"But ... uh ..." Tormod hedged. Of course he knew it was perfectly safe to walk through the gates, making it an easy escape route. The problem, of course, was Baris and the Sword he still held with intent to kill. Dropping even the slightest hint that they knew there was never a curse to begin with might just make him act on that intent, no matter what the Magician said. "The, um, the curse ..."

"What curse?" Presto asked pointedly. "There's no curse keeping anyone trapped here, I've made absolutely certain of that. You're going to go through those gates and be the example that proves it to everyone here. If I'm wrong, well, I guess you guys will get what you deserve anyway. Are you guys saying you think I'm wrong?"

"Uh ..." Tormod hedged. If he could, he would have kept everyone believing there was a curse for as long as possible. That was his duty in service to the Duke of Darkness, but obviously, these children knew otherwise, and it left him without a leg to stand on. The situation in Dastirum was no longer salvageable. At this point, escape was the only option.

"Or, if you'd rather not, we can let your neighbors have a word or two with you," Diana added, backing the butchers even further into a proverbial corner. "Last I saw, there must have been twenty or thirty people looking for you, and some of them had clubs and axes."

They were stuck between a rock and a hard place, and the brothers knew it. If they wanted to live to see tomorrow, they had to get out of this town now. Ironically, taking their only escape route would symbolically set Dastirum free, undoing the months of work they'd accomplished for the Duke and losing the bags of treasure they'd amassed in the process. They'd fallen into a clever trap, and Dastirum was lost to them. Right now, treasures and laurels were not nearly as important as saving their own necks. "All right, all right, we'll go!" Uisdean and Tormod both agreed hastily. They were greedy, they were cowards, but neither of the brothers was stupid.

"Okay then," Presto nodded as if they'd made nothing more than a simple business transaction. "Here's what you'll do." Pointing behind him, generally south, he explained, "There's a couple dozen people back there looking for you. When *that* wall comes down," here he pointed opposite, at the northern wall he'd created to block the alley, "you're gonna run as fast as you can, through the town square, and out the gates. Do not pass 'Go,' do not collect two hundred dollars. I don't care what's happening anywhere else, you just run because those people are gonna catch you if you don't, got it?"

Licking their lips nervously, the butchers looked north and south. From one direction, they could hear the sounds of fighting, from the other, the sound of a large band of people searching for them, calling for their blood. They nodded silently.

"All right then," Presto agreed. "Baris, will you do the honors?"

"How can you just let them go like this?" the Swordsman balked, still unwilling to let the two traitors escape the justice he felt they were owed.

"Baris," Diana said patiently but firmly, and with a smile that conveyed how she understood his reluctance. "Seriously. Just do what he says for now. We'll explain later."

Muttering something under his breath, Baris took a step towards the two butchers. "Move," he commanded, even though the men were already scrabbling aside quickly, clearly afraid he was going to disobey and use the Sword on them after all. When they were out of his way, Baris swung the Sword at the stone barricade three times: twice in downward, vertical cuts, and once horizontally, just above head height. Then he gave it a solid kick, and the rectangular chunk of stone he had cut crashed outward noisily, revealing a rough doorway.

"Go," the young Swordsman barked at Tormod and Uisdean, "before I change my mind."

Neither of the brothers needed to be asked twice. Despite the sounds of shouting and fighting before them, they immediately ran out the doorway, towards the town square and directly towards the town's main gates. They never looked back.

"They won't get far," Diana said by way of the explanation they owed Baris. "They didn't have time to think about the fact that it's at least three days of hard marching to the nearest city. Those guys are in no shape to make it, and they're going out there with no supplies, not even a decent pair of walking shoes. They're either going to come crawling back, or else they're going to get in a whole lot of trouble out there on their own."

**ooo**

Unable to get his feet under him, the Duke of Darkness roared his fury as the Sphere escaped his hands and he could not retrieve it. "Stop! You measly worms!" he commanded to no effect whatsoever as two of his opponents pounced on the powerful artifact. "Do not touch that!" he demanded uselessly as the Cavalier came up the victor, with the Sphere wrapped protectively in his arms. Too much was happening all at once for the Duke to control. His furious attention was suddenly drawn by the sight of two men running hell-bent for the open gates.

"WHAT ARE YOU DOING! NO! NO! STOP, YOU IDIOTS!" he shrieked, but to no avail. In the space of a few heartbeats, his former servants betrayed him and destroyed everything he'd worked for in his quest to conquer Dastirum. Without a second thought about what they were doing, they openly and frantically left the town in front of two score witnesses at the one moment the Duke was powerless to do anything about it.

"NOOOOO!" the Duke howled in impotent fury.

"Hey!" shouted the Cavalier, just in case the Duke's enraged screaming was not enough to attract everyone's attention. Pointing at the retreating figures who were now well beyond the gates and still running, he yelled for everyone around the town square to hear, "Did you all see that? Those guys just went through the gates and nothing-"

Something heavy and solid slammed into Eric's ribs before he could finish his sentence, throwing him several steps forward, just before a burst of scalding heat singed the hairs on the back of his neck.

Enraged and desperate to escape, the Duke had marshaled one more blast of flame through his pain and exhaustion, aiming to incinerate the one who had stolen his Sphere while the boy was distracted. By sheer good fortune, Collin had seen the blast coming when Eric had not, and physically threw himself at his newfound friend to shove him out of harm's way. Eric stumbled and fell to his knees, and the Sphere was knocked from his grasp, but the blast missed him by a narrow margin.

Collin was not so lucky. He went down screaming, the right half of his body in flames.

The Duke didn't pause to see the results of his handiwork. One Dastirite was down, the Cavalier had lost his hold on the Sphere, and getting away was all that mattered now. Twisting his hip, the Duke lashed out blindly and viciously with his uninjured leg. His metal boot connected heavily with something that gave way with a satisfying snap. There was a muffled curse, and the boy who had been pinning his wounded leg released it abruptly.

Lurching up on his good leg, the Duke of Darkness lunged forward, throwing himself upon the Sphere. It was his again, and he had only seconds to act. Amidst the sound of screaming and the sickening smell of burning flesh, he raised the artifact above his head and, in a brilliant flash of indigo as dark as a starry night sky, he was gone.

**ooo**

Eric wasn't quite sure what had just happened. Stunned, on his hands and knees, he stared dumbly at the ground and wondered for a moment just how he'd gotten down here. Screaming ... he could hear lots of screaming. Why did his ribs hurt so much? And what was that awful smell?

Suddenly shaking his head, Eric snapped out of his brief daze and realized he'd had the wind knocked out of him when he'd been shoved down. And then it occurred to him that he'd been shoved by someone trying to get him out of the line of fire.

He remembered in a heartbeat. Collin. The Duke. Oh, no ...

Scrambling to his feet, Eric turned around and saw exactly what he'd feared. Collin had taken the brunt of the Duke's blast, and now lay unnaturally still on the ground, barely breathing, if at all. Most of his hair, clothing, face, and flesh on the right side of his body had been burned to a blackened, oozing crisp, even through the protection of his thick leather jerkin. He'd saved Eric's life, likely at the expense of his own. Horrified, Eric looked quickly away, closing his eyes to keep from passing out.

The Cavalier took a deep, steadying breath, forcing away his lightheadedness and telling himself he needed to do something. It was only after he got a grip on himself and opened his eyes that he noticed Hank was on the ground, in obvious agony too. Their leader was desperately clutching his left shoulder and looking nauseous from the pain, though he was definitely in far better shape than Collin.

_Help. I've got to get them help,_ Eric told himself, looking around quickly for any source of aid. As he did so, he realized that Corheen was one of the sources of the screaming he was hearing. Wide-eyed and horrified, she stared at the burned husk that was her brother and just screamed and screamed and screamed, completely unaware she was even doing it. Bobby was close by, frozen in place and deathly pale, unable to tear his young eyes away from the gruesome sight.

Not too far behind them was another source of the screaming. It was Sora, screaming her husband's name as she ran across the town square, with Sheila only a few steps behind.

The Thief quickly assessed the situation and the wounded, just as her Red Cross training had taught her. Her brother was in shock but obviously all right, and Eric looked a little stunned but was likewise unharmed. Corheen was deeply shaken and on the edge of a breakdown but was physically unharmed. Hank was clearly injured, but as much as she wanted to run and help him first, his life was not the one in danger. Collin was the one who needed the immediate attention of a healer if he was going to survive.

"Here!" Sheila shouted at Sora, catching up with the blonde woman and shoving the wadded-up Net into her hands. "Help your husband first! I think you can still save him!" Not even pausing as Sora took the healing gift, Sheila veered off and raced to her brother, who was still staring at the scene in fascinated horror. There were wounded who needed help, but without the Net there was not much she could do. At least she could make sure Bobby was all right.

"Bobby!" she called to her brother, quickly kneeling in front of the boy and grabbing him firmly by the shoulders. "Don't look, do you understand me? Don't look at any of this!"

"But ... they ..." Bobby began, looking horrified. Though the Realm was a brutal place and Bobby had already been exposed to far more than a normal ten-year old ever should be, Sheila and the others still worked hard to shelter him from the worst of it. No matter what Bobby said, he was only a child, and as yet not fully equipped to deal with the grisly reality now before him.

"I said, don't look at it!" Sheila commanded again, desperately trying to preserve some small spark of her little brother's innocence. To her relief, she spied Presto, Diana, and Baris over Bobby's shoulder as they ran onto the scene. "Presto!" she called urgently. "Take Bobby out of here! Don't let him see any of this!"

"Uh ... okay," Presto agreed as he stopped short and surveyed the ghastly sight. He was more than glad for the opportunity to take Bobby away, because it meant he didn't have to look, either.

"Baris, get your wife calmed down," Sheila commanded, realizing she had to take charge of the situation if she was going to make sure everyone was all right. Caring for people was simply what she did. It came naturally to her. "Diana, make sure Eric's okay. He looks kind of shocked." She didn't even pause to see if her orders were carried out. Leaping to her feet, she rushed over to Hank, who was struggling to sit up while still clutching his shoulder, and dropped to her knees beside him. "Hank," she ordered calmly, "tell me what's wrong. Where does it hurt?"

"Collin ...?" he asked unsteadily, rather than answering Sheila's question.

"Sora's helping him," the Thief answered firmly. "And right now I need to know where you hurt if I'm going to be able to help you."

"Collar bone," he gasped, plainly having difficulty breathing through the pain. "He ... kicked me pretty hard ... I think it's ... broken ..."

"You think your collar bone's broken," she repeated as evenly as she could despite a surge of empathetic pain for her Ranger. "All right, try not to move, just let me see," she asked, trying to carefully peel his hand away from his shoulder and peer beneath the neckline of his shirt. It earned her a great deal of balking and protests as Hank instinctively tried to protect the injury, but finally, she succeeded in prying his fingers away. She took one look at the freshly forming, boot heel-shaped bruise and the clearly misshapen clavicle bone beneath it, blanched slightly, and carefully covered it with the collar of his shirt again. "Yeah, that's ... definitely broken, all right," she admitted.

"I think I'm gonna puke," Hank answered through gritted teeth.

"Okay, let's just stay calm," Sheila told him evenly, "and you need to stay still. Keep your breakfast in your stomach, do you hear me? I don't want you moving until we can-"

"Here," interrupted a feminine voice, and Sheila looked up as Sora approached, quietly and efficiently draping the Net over Hank's shoulder where his pain was most obvious. "I think Collin's gonna be all right now. Thank you ... I don't know what I woulda done without this."

Sheila smiled as relief clearly passed over the Ranger's features when the Net glowed, and then she glanced behind her to see nothing short of a miracle. On Death's doorstep just a few moments ago, Collin was sitting up, unburned, and remarkably alive. His skin didn't show the slightest patch of redness, and even his burned-away hair had grown back into its unruly, reddish mop. The only thing the Net hadn't been able to heal, of course, was his clothing. For propriety's sake, Eric had loaned him his cape, and Collin was now wrapping it around his waist like a kilt.

As Sheila watched the Net working yet another miracle, it suddenly struck her how admirably Sora had kept a level head during the crisis, and how quickly and efficiently she'd worked to help save the injured. Now, here she was, calmly aiding still more wounded, staying emotionally stable and dealing with half a dozen emergencies despite the trauma to her own husband which would have made most people go to pieces. She hadn't been much of a fighter, but the woman was a healer who handled the situation like a professional. She was a natural at it. Maybe even more of a natural at it than Sheila was. Seeing her talents inspired Sheila to make a spur-of-the-moment decision.

"No, keep it," she said with complete certainty when Sora finished with Hank's shoulder and tried to hand the Net back to her. "There are other people who got hurt and they still need help. You're good with that Net. You know, I think it was meant for you all along. It's yours. I must have just been keeping it until it found its real owner."

Sora looked deeply surprised. "R-really? For me?"

"Yes, I'm sure of it," Sheila answered. "I know there's a lot of people who've gotten sick in this town. Once you're done helping everyone who was hurt in the fight, then you can start helping them. I get the feeling this place desperately needs a Healer, and from what I've seen, you're it. I'm serious, the Net's yours. Now go make sure your husband and everyone else is all right."

Grinning from ear to ear, Sora practically bounded over to Collin, unfolding the Net to show him what had saved his life. Sheila smiled fondly and then turned her attention back to Hank, who was rotating his left arm carefully and discovering, much to his clear relief, that his shoulder was as good as new. "Yeah, I know, maybe I shouldn't have given it away," she admitted as she gently pulled at the neckline of Hank's shirt again, wanting to see with her own eyes that the injury had been healed. "We probably could use it down the line."

"I wasn't going to say anything," Hank answered simply, quietly taking her hand in his. "Maybe we could have used it, but there's almost a thousand people in this town who could use it more."

Sheila looked relieved that they were both thinking along the same lines, and gave him a hesitant smile as they helped each other to their feet. "So you think I did the right thing?"

He returned her smile without hesitation. "Only if you think I did the right thing by giving that Sword to Baris."

"Hey, look! We did it!" Diana shouted, interrupting several conversations as she pointed. Of the forty or so witnesses to the battle for their town, thirty-seven of them had seen Tormod and Uisdean run through the gates and safely into the freedom beyond. Twenty-eight of those people were brave enough, encouraged enough, or just hopeful enough to believe what they had seen. Of them, nine had already run joyfully into the fields beyond the town's walls, laughing and screaming happily, and the rest were quick to follow. After six months of imprisoned starvation, they'd almost forgotten how green the plains were, how endless the azure sky. The laughter became a cheerful uproar as the citizens of Dastirum realized the Magician had spoken truly. The curse could harm them no longer.

Diana turned and high-fived a grinning Presto as they watched months of panic, fear, and despair turn to elation in a matter of minutes. Even Collin and Sora joined in the celebration and ran through the harmless gates, laughing and shouting in triumph. Baris and Corheen were only a few steps behind. Dastirum was finally free.

Inside the walls, the six young newcomers to Dastirum smiled at the scene, watching more and more people rushing jubilantly for freedom as word quickly spread. Many of the liberated but starving people threw themselves onto the fields around the town, which were still laden with the summer's crop. Others simply danced and shouted their joy to the sky.

Suddenly, Hank's head snapped around, and for the first time since his injury, it occurred to him to assess the results of their battle. He'd been in too much pain to comprehend until now that something important was missing. "Hey," he demanded sharply, his tone alarmed and completely at odds with the shouts of joy that filled the town. "Where's the Duke of Darkness?"


	11. Dénouement

**Dastirum**

Chapter 11: Dénouement

**ooo**

Exhausted, humiliated, and in more than a little pain, Dubhar, the Duke of Darkness, stepped unsteadily through a shimmering rift of indigo and into his marble-tiled study just a second after disappearing from Dastirum. Placing the Sphere carefully onto its three-legged, golden stand, he then gave in to his anger and turned to smash a gauntleted fist onto the nearby table. Wood splintered with furious force, and the priceless books that had been carefully piled there were flung to the floor in disarray.

Those children! Those accursed, interfering children had destroyed everything! Already, Dastirum had slipped from his grasp. Whether those children were aware that his so-called curse had no real power when they staged their show, Dubhar did not know. But one way or another, they had demonstrated to the people of Dastirum that they were free. Worse, the flight of his fool servants in the midst of their spectacle had done more damage to his months of effort than those children could have hoped. He would hunt those idiots down and make sure they suffered for failing him.

Ripping his macabre helmet off, he flung it across the room in frustration, revealing sickly, pale green flesh, a protruding lower jaw, and a squashed nose that heavily resembled a pig's snout. Though he had the intelligence to be a Wizard of moderate power, there was obviously an Orc in his not-too-distant ancestry.

The town had been so ready to capitulate! He had been so close to finally gaining the toehold he had long desired in Yarfell, his first step to taking a kingdom that even Venger was not able to touch. And now, nothing. Nothing to show for six months of wasted effort but a terrible pain in his upper thigh.

Grimacing, the Duke sat in the upholstered chair that stood watch over the splintered remains of its matching table. Carefully unbuckling the portion of his plate mail armor that protected the thigh, he studied the bloody wound where the knife had managed to stab him. The blade had somehow slipped beneath the tasset and skittered along the metal cuisse until, by pure chance, it found the joint in his armor and buried itself in unprotected flesh. The boy had just been lucky.

Removing his gauntlets, he placed his fingers on either side of the wound and poured his energy into it, willing the skin and muscle to knit themselves together again. All things considered, the wound could have been much worse. Yet, it had been enough to distract him at the most crucial moment. He shook his head and snarled, angry at his own carelessness. Physical fights were not his forte. His victories were brought about purely by intimidation, a skill he had learned from his former Master. He knew better than to grab a hostage that was armed ... but he would have sworn on his mother's grave that the boy had only the Shield! True, the Duke recognized the Shield as one of the Weapons of Power, but he'd felt that a purely defensive Weapon was no threat. He'd seen no blade anywhere on the Cavalier's person until it was too late.

Too late, at least, to avoid this morning's debacle, the Duke decided, but not yet too late to reclaim Dastirum. After all, they had only had their freedom for a few minutes now. He could strike back at this moment, just as soon as he'd finished healing his leg. Dastirum would have no time to rebuild its resources. In his mind's eye, he could already see the citizens running beyond the barriers around their town, reveling in their newfound freedom, but really, they were no better off now than they were yesterday. They were weak and starving. All he had to do was force them back into their town, and this time he would stay there for however long it took, allowing them no mercy until the town was his. They did not have the wherewithal to fight him a second time. True, the Magician he'd confronted today had some skill, but he was only a boy, with nowhere near the power of the Wizard in Yarfell Proper.

Again, the Duke snarled. Children! That's all they were, children, yet for the moment, they had cost him the town! They would suffer for this. Oh, how those accursed children would suffer. He had a hundred ways of making each and every one of them regret the humiliation they had served him this day. They would suffer, and then they would die. Slowly. Very slowly.

There was a knock on the chamber door.

Casting a surly glance in the direction of the carved, oaken double door, the Duke muttered something under his breath about his servants being too curious for their own good. One of them had probably heard him smash the table, and was coming to investigate, looking for more gossip for the servants to whisper amongst themselves when they thought he wasn't listening. The thought only irritated him all the more. "What is it?" he snapped crossly.

There was only silence, and no answer from the other side of the door. Then, the knock came again.

"Yes, yes, come in!" Dubhar shouted, getting to his feet. If the servants were so nosy about what they'd heard behind his door, then they could find out what had happened by getting in here and cleaning up the mess!

The chamber door opened.

The Duke of Darkness froze. And then, panic-stricken, he began to tremble.

Regal and stately, Venger strode into the room, and gave an unfailingly polite nod of his head. "Dubhar. What a ... *lovely* home you have," he said with chilling courtesy.

"I ... I ..." the Duke stammered, desperately trying to find his voice. He could feel his guts turning to liquid in the terrifying presence of his former Master. "I have no quarrel with you, Venger!"

Stopping just a step away from the Duke, so that he loomed menacingly over the cowering figure, Venger's expression went from polite neutrality to a dangerous scowl. "Such insolence towards your betters," he threatened coldly. "I give you this one chance to reconsider your poor choice of words."

"Er ..." the Duke began nervously. He knew that Venger could only mean for him to say the word 'Master,' but he clamped his jaw shut before the word could escape. He had left Venger's service years ago, and owed him no loyalty! The Duke would never admit that it was utter terror which forced him to consider saying it anyway, but, as he stalled for time, he suddenly realized that the Dark Lord could not threaten him now. "I will not!" he suddenly shouted with a rush of reckless boldness. "I do not fear you!"

"Indeed?" Venger asked with an almost patronizing smile. He was rather enjoying this.

"No! You have no power here!" the Duke shouted, gesturing wildly at his door. "You have crossed my threshold unwelcomed! You have entered my home uninvited, and have surrendered your power because of it!"

The Duke quoted one of the most basic laws of magic: The homestead was a place of sanctuary and power for the one who owned it. The very walls of a home would protect the one who lived there, coming alive with intangible, invisible energy that acted as a defensive net to keep unwanted magical forces from entering. The longer the owner made it his home, magic user or not, the more layers of magical wards naturally settled around it. One like it surrounds every home, to a greater or lesser extent, and any guest who wished to enter had to be invited by the owner to cross it. To force one's way across the threshold was to surrender a portion of power equal to the threshold's own. The Duke's threshold was incredibly strong. Crossing it uninvited, as the Duke had said, would have rendered Venger nearly powerless.

Venger had, of course, planned for this.

"Uninvited?" Venger asked in feigned surprise. "And what are the customs of this land, if the phrase 'come in' does not constitute an invitation?"

The Duke's greenish face turned very, very pale when he realized what he had done. He sat down hard in the chair once again. Venger had walked right through his threshold at his own invitation. The Dark Lord had not surrendered one iota of his power at the door. "I, er, my apologies for the misunderstanding, but, I ... as I said, I have no quarrel with you, Ve ..." the Duke took one look at the dark expression crossing Venger's face, and swallowed the name so quickly that he almost choked. "I mean, M ... Master."

"So you say," Venger nodded, striding about the room casually. He'd not been this entertained since making Kelek grovel like the worm he was! "And until today, I had no quarrel with you either, my dear Dubhar."

"You ... did not?" the Duke asked uncertainly, his mind racing in utter surprise. No quarrel? Then what was it that Venger wanted from him? Why was he here at all? "Is this about Dastirum?" he guessed, then quickly offered, "The town is yours if you want it, I have merely prepared the way for you-"

"I care not for any part of the kingdom of Yarfell," Venger interrupted so sharply that the Duke reeled back in his chair. "Were this simply about Dastirum, I would let you have it with my compliments."

As utterly terrified as he was completely confused, the Duke had to admit to himself that at this point, he could not fathom what it was that Venger wanted with him. What he did know was that Venger never made social calls, and certainly never offered to form alliances with former underlings who had defied him. That all added up to serious trouble. "Then ... what have I done to offend you ... Master?" he added quickly when Venger flashed him a sharp glare from corner of his red eye.

"Those children," Venger said simply.

"Those children," the Duke repeated with a snarl, finding a reserve of anger despite the situation. Those children, who had destroyed all his plans and wasted his efforts, and caused him no small amount of physical pain in the process. As soon as he was done here with Venger, he would hunt those children down and take his revenge. "I nearly killed them," he informed Venger. "I would have gladly slaughtered all of them, as slowly and painfully as possible. And I shall yet. I will destroy each and every one of them for what they-"

"You are a fool, Dubhar," Venger interrupted again, sounding almost bored with the topic. His back was turned carelessly to the Duke as he drew one of the leather-bound tomes from its shelf and inspected it with casual interest. "Such a fool that I found it necessary to intercede on their behalf before you could cause them more trouble than you had. Did you not notice the Weapons they bore?" he asked nonchalantly.

"Er ... yes ...?" the Duke admitted slowly, his anger switching once again to confusion. Venger had directly interfered today? When? And why had Venger not just killed him and been done with it? "They seemed to be some of the Weapons of Power, I believe," he continued hastily when he realized that his former Master was expecting a better answer. Despite still wondering why he wasn't dead already, his reply to Venger finally triggered another realization in his own mind. "Oh. Weapons of Power. That would make them some of the Dungeon Master's pupils."

"Yes. Dungeon Master's pupils," Venger confirmed with a nod, replacing the book carefully. Abruptly, he rounded in utter fury on the Duke, letting out a bone-chilling roar that shook the books on their shelves. Eyes glowing as red as freshly-spilled blood, claws curled into deadly fists, menacing wings spanning half the length of the room, he advanced so wrathfully that the Duke fell out of his chair and scrambled away in terror. "The right to kill Dungeon Master's pupils is mine alone, Dubhar!" he thundered, as deadly energy crackled in a violent storm around him. "Those children are *mine* to destroy as I choose! They are *my* enemies above all else! I alone, and no other, shall have the pleasure of destroying them when the time is right. How *dare* you claim what is rightfully mine?"

Panicked, the Duke scrabbled desperately out of Venger's path, and made a lunge for the golden stand in the center of the room. He grabbed the Sphere, thinking to escape, but realized it was useless before he'd even visualized a safe destination. Venger would surely follow, no matter where he went. As strong as he was, he still didn't have the power to take on Venger and hope to live. Then he had only one option, even if it cost him the Sphere. Rushing at his former Master, he drew up a mental image of the coldest, most desolate and barren plane of existence that legend had ever taught him. "I will send you to a place from which even you cannot return!" he shouted, and made to throw the celestial object at the Dark Lord.

The crystalline Sphere exploded before it ever left the Duke's hand, shattering into a thousand useless shards with no more than a glance from Venger. "Bluffing, Dubhar," Venger scolded with a patronizing tone. "Always bluffing."

It would have astounded Venger to learn that the bluff he thought he'd called had, in truth, been the only threat the Duke had ever made that was completely serious.

"Now then," Venger continued thoughtfully as the soon-to-be former Duke of Darkness stared stupidly at his cut and bleeding hand. "As I have said, I alone will deal with the children when the time is right. But at this moment, I choose to deal with you. You should never have drawn my attention in this way, for now I am forced to remember the insult you dealt me when you left my service and styled yourself an emperor of the darkness. I have not forgotten, Dubhar, and I have certainly not forgiven. I simply wonder, what shall I do with an upstart pretender such as yourself?"

**ooo**

"The ... Duke? Crap!" Eric realized. In the horrible aftermath of the final attack, then the rush of elation as the townspeople realized they were free, the Duke himself had been momentarily forgotten. "I think he used the Sphere and got away!"

"He could be anywhere!" Diana responded quickly. "Guys, we've got to get all those people out there to come back inside! There's nothing stopping him from using the Sphere to attack them like his curse still works!"

"Oh, but there is indeed something stopping the Duke of Darkness from using the Sphere, Acrobat," came an unexpected voice from somewhere close to the ground. The four of them whirled around quickly even though most of them were hardly surprised by appearances like this any more.

"Hey, Dungeon Master, ol' buddy," Eric greeted with mild sarcasm. "Care to stick around for a while this time?"

Dungeon Master merely smiled cryptically and did not answer. Instead, he just paused for a moment before looking behind himself expectantly. In that brief space of time, Presto, who had taken Bobby for a walk well away from the gruesomeness of a few minutes ago, came wandering back with his young charge.

"Hey, look! It's Dungeon Master!" Bobby exclaimed. He was feeling much better and already had nearly forgotten the sight of the grievous injuries the Duke had dealt his friends. Or perhaps, his young mind was simply shutting it out before the memory could drive him mad.

"Yeah, we thought that the Duke might come back and attack now that people are leaving the town," Hank quickly filled the two in. "But Dungeon Master was just telling us that something's stopping him from doing it all of the sudden."

"Unfortunately, Ranger, the thing that is stopping the Duke also prevents anyone else from using the Sphere," Dungeon Master explained with a certain amount of sadness on his pupils' behalf. "The item has been destroyed."

Six young faces fell almost identically at the news. Another chance to go home, gone, just like that. "How?" Eric asked for all of them.

"The Duke of Darkness did the one thing he should never have done: he attempted to pursue that which Venger claims as his own," their diminutive guide explained. "Venger has responded accordingly, and the Duke must now face the consequences of his actions. Venger has imprisoned him, alone, in his own stronghold. Without the use of the Sphere, he is truly as trapped as the citizens of this town once believed themselves to be. He faces the same options that he offered Dastirum and so many lands before it: either capitulate to Venger's will, or eventually starve."

Even Sheila found it difficult to be disturbed by the Duke's plight. Poetic justice had a beauty all its own, even if their arch-enemy was the one who meted it out. "I'll bet Venger doesn't even realize that he spoiled another chance for us to get home," she guessed quietly, "but what I'd love to know what it was that the Duke almost took that upset him so much. I mean, I remember you saying that it was the only way he might see the Duke as a threat, but from what we've heard, Venger didn't want anything to do with this kingdom."

"At the moment," Dungeon Master answered, slightly uncomfortably, "perhaps it is best that you do not know the answer to that."

"Well, if you say so," Diana shrugged, recognizing something about Dungeon Master's tone that said there would simply be no further discussion of the topic. "But personally, what I want to know is why the Duke just up and left in the middle of all that. Presto and I didn't see everything that happened, but from what I could tell, Hank was down, Collin was practically dead, Corheen was freaking out, and Eric looked kinda stunned for a minute there. All that left was Bobby." She grinned apologetically, trying to placate the little Barbarian. "No offense, Bobby, but he coulda taken all you guys at that point."

"That's probably because he was injured," Hank reasoned. "I guess you didn't see that part. Eric stabbed him in the leg." The Ranger frowned suddenly as a thought occurred to him, a minor detail that had been lost in the greater chaos. Turning to Eric, he said, "Nice knife, by the way. Would have been nicer to know that you had it. It might have been a little easier to figure out what you were trying to tell me when the Duke grabbed you."

"Oh, what, this?" Eric asked with a slight blush, pulling a bloody knife out of a sheath on his belt that simply hadn't been there a moment ago. He noticed the blood drying on the blade, and reached for his cape to clean it, before remembering that Collin was wearing that particular garment at the moment. "Um ... well," he explained lamely, "All I was trying to tell you was to play along and keep him distracted, and buy me a couple seconds. Sorry about that. Looks like you got the message loud and clear anyway."

"Well, okay," Hank persisted, "so where did that knife come from?"

"Um," Eric looked away, clearly embarrassed. "Thedragonsgraveyard," he blurted quickly.

"Whoa, wait, what?" Presto interrupted. As Eric's reply sunk in, it left the Magician wavering somewhere between outright curiosity, sheer surprise, and anger that he'd been seemingly lied to. "You told me you didn't take any Weapons from the Dragon's Graveyard!"

"No, I didn't say that!" Eric defended himself, sticking the Dagger back into the sheath on his belt, where it stayed perfectly visible this time. "I said, you didn't *see me*take anything from the Dragon's Graveyard. And you didn't. Nobody ever saw me with this Dagger until now, did you?"

Hank vaguely remembered getting the strange impression that Eric had been carrying a blade when they'd investigated the salted gardens, but before he could say anything, Presto plunged on, "Now you're starting to sound like him!" as he pointed towards Dungeon Master.

Or rather, to the Dwarf-shaped space of empty air where Dungeon Master had been only seconds before.

"Well, he did it again," Diana said with no surprise in her voice, before immediately turning back to Eric. "So, did you get that from the Dragon's Graveyard, or didn't you?"

"I ... did," the Cavalier admitted. "And before this goes any further, I'm sorry if it looks like I lied to you guys about it. It's just ... I think that's the Dagger's power. You can't see it unless you know right where it is, and you're paying real close attention to it."

"What ... you mean it can turn invisible?" Sheila asked for clarification as she fingered the edge of her Cloak, wondering if both Weapons had similar powers.

"No, it's just ... you can't concentrate on it," Eric tried to explain, though much of this was his own guesswork. No one had spelled out the Dagger's power to him when he'd found it. His attempts to discover its uses had not been that dissimilar to Presto's experiments with his own Knife, only more subtle. "It's like you can't see it if you don't specifically know to look for it, and if I do something with it, your mind just comes up with some other explanation for whatever I did, instead of letting you think I had a knife. But I wasn't sure, so I kind of had to not tell you guys about it and see if anyone noticed. Heck, I even carved up a pheasant with it right in front of you, Presto. You just figured I'd borrowed your Knife when you weren't looking. Or when I helped Sheila fix chicken soup for dinner the first night we were here."

Frowning, the Thief asked, "Wait, didn't you use a knife you found in the kitchen?"

Instead of answering, the Cavalier merely smiled. "See?" he said with a flourish of his hand, as if Sheila had just confirmed everything he was saying. "And when I was whittling something in front of you guys, it never even clicked with any of you that I had to have been using something sharp to do it." The Cavalier smiled apologetically before continuing, "It's the Ultimate Concealed Weapon, you know? I mean, how handy would that be if somebody searched you for weapons or, oh, I dunno, maybe grabbed you because they made the mistake of thinking you didn't have anything to fight back with?"

"Then how did you find it in the first place?" Hank asked. "You couldn't have been able to see it since you weren't looking for it. As a matter of fact, since you didn't even know it existed, you never should have been able to find it at all."

"I ... uh ..." Eric looked at his boots, absently scratching at his ear in embarrassment. "I kinda sat on it."

"You ... wait, you what?" Diana demanded, trying not to laugh in Eric's face, but clearly storing that tidbit away for future reference.

"The handle!" Eric shot back heatedly. "I sat on the handle. Plus it was in the sheath, so no, Di, I did not stab myself! I sat down on what I thought was a nice, flat rock, but all of the sudden there was this big lump under my butt. So I got up and swept it off," here he made a quick sweeping motion with his hand, "and that's when I bumped the Dagger. I've been able to see it ever since, but I think that's probably because I know that I have it. And now I kinda drew everyone's attention to it in a super huge way, so you can all see it, too. For now. If I move it someplace else tomorrow that you don't know about, I'll bet you won't be able to find it at all." Offering a lame grin, the Cavalier explained, "I can't really say that was the way I wanted to go about testing it, but I kinda figured all along that was what would happen. Actually, I've sorta been wondering what would happen if I sat it down and forgot where I put it. I don't think I could ever find it again."

"Okay, so let me guess," Presto concluded. "You had it in your hand, like, the whole time we were there in the Dragon's Graveyard, and what clued you in was that none of us said anything about it or even looked like we noticed you had it, right?"

"Well, yeah," Eric admitted quietly, "but most of you were ... kinda distracted at the time. That's why I didn't say anything at first. I wanted to see if any of you could see it once things had calmed down and ... gotten back to normal, you know?"

Heaving a sigh, Diana crossed her arms and then glanced at Presto. He just shrugged at her inquiring expression, and, having heard out Eric's reasoning, didn't look too terribly offended by the deceit. "Okay, Eric, fine," she sighed grandiosely. "You're forgiven. Just don't do it again."

"Oh, I won't," Eric agreed. "Not with this Dagger, anyway. I think I'm gonna give it to Collin. It's not much, but I think I owe him something for saving my life like that."

**ooo**

It was now the second day of Dastirum's liberation. Word that the Duke of Darkness had been defeated, his curse broken, had spread quickly. Within half an hour, it seemed like the whole town was outside, shouting and dancing in joy. When the initial jubilation was finally exhausted, then came the work of harvesting anything that was immediately edible in their untended fields.

For the most part, the people of Dastirum dined on vegetables that first day, but at least they dined. Very little meat was to be found. Most of the cattle that had been set out to pasture before the town had been "cursed" were now a long way off, and could not easily be rounded up since the townsfolk had eaten all their horses in desperation. Hunting the herd animals that wandered the prairies was an equally impossible task without horses. But they were not forced to be entirely vegetarian in their first days of freedom: at least a small amount of fresh meat was provided by hunters with slings or bows and arrows, who were able to bring down scores of the wild hares that had populated the fields to abundance.

Just to be safe, Bobby and the others elected to keep Uni hidden for another day or two.

The six young strangers who, by all appearances, had freed the town were hailed as heroes, as were the four brave Dastirites who had aided them. Though the townspeople had little to offer to show their extreme gratitude for their freedom and their very lives, they gave what they could, even if it was just their hearty thanks, an impromptu parade, and the promise of carven marble statues in the town square as soon as the Artisan's Guild got their resources together again. Only Eric, and, surprisingly, Collin were particularly interested in the latter.

Baris's father made a more tempting promise in his gratitude: As soon as he was able to open his inn again, they could all have free room and board for however long they wished to stay. He was uncertain when that reopening would be, as he had to re-stock the kitchens, replace most of the tables in the common room, find a way to wash the remaining sheets and blankets without any soap, and stockpile enough firewood to fuel the fireplaces and warm the baths. A grand re-opening in the next day or two did not look likely. The offer was appreciated nonetheless.

The morning of that second day of freedom brought something to Dastirum almost as welcome as freedom itself. It couldn't have been much past ten in the morning, and most everyone was far afield, hard at work at the beginning of several weeks' worth of intense harvesting. It was during one of Eric's many pauses to complain how much digging potatoes hurt his back when he happened to glance to the northeast. He interrupted his own gripes, which no one was really listening to anyway, to shout in pure delight, "Hey! Look!"

Everyone within earshot whipped their heads up to see what had caught the Cavalier's attention. There, on the road heading into the town, was a column of precisely marching soldiers, well over two hundred of them. At the head of the column were a dozen or so riders on horseback, including two who each bore a standard of Yarfell on a long pike. The silken banners fluttered colorfully in the breeze.

They were too far away to make out any fine details, but details weren't necessary to realize what this was: a relief mission. "Lord Tolan!" Diana exclaimed to her friends. "He must have made it to Yarfell Proper!"

The six of them had no intention of simply dropping everything they'd picked and leaving it lying in the field, so, loaded down with their heavy bags of vegetables, it took just shy of half an hour to walk the mile or so back to Dastirum. By the time they arrived, the soldiers had quickly and efficiently set up a relief operation. Many were in the town square, doling out flatbread, dried meats, medicines, and various emergency supplies to long lines of waiting Dastirites. Others were going door to door, assessing the extent of the suffering while bringing help to those who were too sick to leave their houses. Soldiers with engineering training were evaluating the damage to the town and estimating what it would take to rebuild, while the rest were busy making sure the area was secure and that there was no imminent threat hanging over the town.

In all the organized chaos, the banners of the Kingdom of Yarfell could be seen serenely fluttering above the heads of the crowd. Hank and Eric teamed up to push their tandem way through the horde of eager townspeople toward these flags, dozing a way for Diana, Sheila, Bobby and Presto to follow. Soon enough, they broke through the mass of people, and saw that a field command, of sorts, had been set up on the table that Presto had used as his altar the day before. On either side of the table stood a soldier holding his banner proudly. Papers were spread over the table, and a young officer leaned over them, frantically writing notes as fast as the reports were coming in. Off to one side, at last, was a familiar face, speaking to a man in cream-colored, burgundy-trimmed robes.

"I tell you," the older man, who was unquestionably a Wizard, could be heard saying. "There's *nothing* here that I can sense in the slightest!"

"Lord Tolan!" Hank shouted at the sight of their friend from Yarfell Proper, who was clad once again in the familiar, silver-trimmed black leather he had worn when they met him a week ago. Said Lord looked up abruptly when he heard his name, and for just a moment, his smile beamed at the sight of the six youngsters he had so quickly grown fond of.

But just as quickly as his smile appeared, his face fell when he realized what this meant. "Oh ..." Tolan said quietly, momentarily taken aback. "Do not think that I am not glad to see you, but ... to have you here now means that you were unable to find your way back to your own world."

"Well, no," Diana admitted as the others looked downcast for a moment. "The Duke got away before we could get the Sphere. Then we got it on good authority from Dungeon Master that it was destroyed."

"I see," Tolan nodded sympathetically. "My sincerest condolences, then. I know you desired to go home more than anything. Were it in my power to grant you that wish, I would in an instant, for all the aid you have rendered to Dastirum and therefore, to Yarfell."

"Well, we'll just keep trying," Hank answered in the most upbeat tone he could manage. "We'll get there eventually, even if we have to break some more curses along the way to do it."

"Yes ... about that," Tolan asked, turning to the robed man beside him. He was much older, to be sure, but he casually wore a mantle of complete power about him that might have made even Venger think twice before tangling with him. He was bald on top, with his gray beard trimmed close, and those from Earth thought that something about his eyes reminded them strongly of Sean Connery. "This is the Court Wizard Echlar," Tolan introduced. "I believe I mentioned him to you before."

"Whatever he said, it's all lies," the old Wizard shot in immediately.

Tolan gave the Wizard a sideways glance. "In general, I said rather good things about you."

"Well, there you have it," Echlar agreed. "Lies. I'm a grouchy curmudgeon and everyone knows it. However, this grouchy curmudgeon has a few questions about what happened here." His sharp eyes zeroed in on Presto, who looked like he was about ready to faint from giddiness in the presence of a "real" Wizard. "From what I hear, the Duke of Darkness placed a curse on this town months ago, so that no one could pass beyond the walls of the town without risking death and destruction, and that you found a way to break it just yesterday?"

"Well ... um ..." Presto began, but the Wizard Echlar forged ahead without an answer.

"The strange thing is, there was a pretty powerful Circle over there that held traces of magic that would have been powerful enough to break a curse," he continued, which garnered not only a startled look from Presto but from all of his friends as well, "but I can't seem to sense any of the Duke's curse to begin with. I'd think that if a curse had been around that long, I ought to feel *something* leftover. The smell of a musty room that's been locked up for six months doesn't air out in a day. It's the same with magic, I'm sure you realize."

"Um ... yeah ..." Presto tried to agree, but his mind was racing too quickly to settle on any one thought. This Wizard had found traces of magic _powerful enough to break a curse?_

"Look, we can explain what happened," Hank offered, pointedly looking around at the scores of Dastirites packing the town square, "but not here, all right? I think we ought to discuss it in private because, well, maybe the people here shouldn't be hearing all the details just yet."

Tolan considered this, quickly understanding that there was something going on here that was not as it seemed. Echlar just gave Presto a very suspicious look.

"Your Highness?" the young officer who had been writing at the table politely interrupted. Offering Tolan a piece of parchment covered in precise, copperplate handwriting, he explained, "I believe I have a preliminary death count. Estimates show almost three hundred citizens died from disease, destruction, or starvation."

"Three hundred?" Tolan repeated, shaking his head sadly as he scanned the document. "That's three hundred too many. However long it takes you, Edellin, I want the name of every citizen who perished because of the Duke of Darkness. I will not let this ... yes?" he asked in confusion, trailing off as he noticed the six inexplicably drop-jawed stares of his young friends utterly focused on him.

"Your *Highness?*" Diana asked bluntly.

"Well, yes," Tolan answered, as clearly and utterly bewildered as they were, but for an entirely different reason. "Either that, or 'Sir,' as I am his commanding officer. Is something wrong?"

"Okay, now hold on here," Eric said when he recovered from the surprise slightly ahead of everyone else. "I asked and you specifically said you weren't the King of Yarfell!"

"That is correct," Tolan answered, nonplused, and for some reason, the Wizard Echlar erupted into a fit of hearty belly-laughs at this. "Yarfell has no King, she is ruled by a Queen."

"Then why the 'Your Highness,' Your Highness?" Eric persisted. "You said you don't rule Yarfell, and you're definitely not the Queen's brother and not the Queen's son, because you indicated your sister is a 'friend' of the Queen."

"I am married to the Queen," Tolan explained, clearly and honestly sounding as though he thought everyone knew that, and was completely surprised that they didn't. "I told you as much, did I not?"

"No, you didn't! Oh, wait, yes you did," Eric realized, contradicting himself in the same breath. "When you told us that running around in the woods without an armed guard drove your wife and your Queen nuts."

"Yes ...?" Tolan asked, still not quite sure what the problem was.

Giving a wry laugh when he realized what Eric was driving at, Hank explained, "Your wife and your Queen ... we thought you were talking about two different people, Your Highness."

"Her Majesty is my wife, and also my Queen," Tolan tried to say, before a laughing Echlar slapped him so heartily on the back that it actually pitched His Highness forward a step or two.

"You went adventuring with a group of Outworlders for *how many* years, and you've already forgotten how they speak?" the Wizard practically howled in amusement. Obviously, a grouchy curmudgeon he was not, despite all his protests to the contrary.

Clearly embarrassed by the misunderstanding and slightly miffed by the rough treatment, Tolan gave the Wizard a stern glare. "I know I can be a bit reticent when it comes to announcing my status to strangers, Echlar, but I can assure you, at the time, I was quite convinced they understood my ... oh, *please,* do not start bowing now, my friends," he interrupted himself when it was clear that at least Sheila and Diana were trying to figure out the proper etiquette. "We have gone this long without it as is, and all the bowing and scraping starts to annoy me after a while."

"That's our boy, humble to the end," Echlar said, and it wasn't entirely clear if he was being serious or not. "Comes of being raised the younger son of a Noble Lord. So maybe I should clarify for you kids," he added. "If a man marries either the Queen, or the Princess who is first in line for the Throne of Yarfell and who will become Queen, that doesn't make him King since he's not the one with the royal lineage. His official title is Prince Consort. Our current Prince Consort has always been quite adamant that he doesn't *technically* rule the Kingdom," and here the Wizard slung his arm around Lord Tolan's shoulders and gave him a friendly glare in return, "even if ninety-nine people out of every hundred look up to him with just as much adoration as they do our Queen. Just ... what is it that you Outworlders say? Just F.Y.I."

"Ah," Eric said, with slight but detectable sarcasm. "I can see the incredibly huge difference."

**ooo**

Now that Lord Tolan's relationship to the Queen of Yarfell was known, it was easy to see how he'd pulled off such a major relief effort so quickly. The newly liberated town's celebrations only redoubled by afternoon of the next day, when the second and much larger wave of Yarfellian relief reached Dastirum. With a sudden supply of livestock to tend, crops to harvest, and buildings to repair and rebuild, the town came alive, bustling as if the past six months had never happened.

Aided by the influx of supplies, Baris's father had managed to get his inn opened again much sooner than he'd anticipated, and the building with its private rooms, open common area, and famous kitchen became a sort of command center and barracks for the Yarfellian officers. As promised, he also offered free room and board to each of the Outworlders who had saved their town.

About that time, it was reported to Lord Tolan that two frightened and disheveled men had stumbled into the town after having obviously spent at least two nights unsheltered and unsupplied beneath the stars. They had looked around, seen the soldiers, and, for all intents and purposes, had thrown themselves upon the nearest officer, begging to be arrested before the townspeople saw them and tore them to pieces. The bemused soldiers had complied, according to Lord Edellin's report, but beyond that, he was only able to learn that the men were brothers whose names were Tormod and Uisdean. They were as yet unable to get a coherent explanation from either of the prisoners.

Wanting to assist wherever they could, the kids had volunteered for several different duties along with the soldiers and civilians who were helping the town get back on its feet. Sheila, along with Sora, was busy doling out aid and medicine to the sick and injured, while Bobby was happily helping to clear the piles of rubble that were once brick and mortar buildings. His job, which suited him perfectly, was simply to smash the large chunks of crumbled masonry into much smaller pieces that could be easily carted away. Diana had taken it upon herself to try to return the stolen heirlooms to the families of their deceased owners, though identifying and verifying the proper heirs was turning out to be a time-consuming and tedious process. Presto was personally assisting the Wizard Echlar in "removing the cursed blight from the gardens," which meant that they had devised some magical way of discreetly leaching the salt out of the soil.

Hank and Eric had volunteered to help the construction crews. Eric, of course, had cheekily applied for a supervisor's position, but since neither of them had any masonry or carpentry experience, they were assigned the task of making sure the workers had a steady stream of lumber, nails, bricks and mortar. Until about one minute ago, that was exactly what they had been doing. Between the two of them, they'd been hauling a load of tools and nails to the south side of town. Now, they stood in mute horror at the edge of a pit they had discovered by accident.

Hank had quickly shut his eyes and turned away, his face turning almost as green as his tunic. Eric, on the other hand, could not tear his eyes away and just stared, frozen and horrified, into the mass grave where almost three hundred corpses had been piled up during the past five months.

Both boys almost started hyperventilating with the hideous shock, but the foul stench of the grave gagged them visibly. Of course, what had they been expecting? People had been dying of starvation and disease almost every day, and since there was no firewood for funeral pyres, and no way of burying them outside the town walls, the dead had to go somewhere.

Eric watched as four men, with cloths wrapped around their mouths and noses, descended carefully into the pit and gingerly lifted a bloated body that had been hastily wrapped in threadbare rags before it had been tossed into the grave. As they moved the corpse to an ox-drawn cart, the Cavalier realized these men had been given the sad duty of removing all the bodies to give them proper burials in the fields surrounding the town.

"Three hundred people dead, that's what Lord Tolan's lieutenant reported," Hank said softly, still refusing to look at the bodies. "How many of them do you think died in the last week?"

It was an oddly phrased question, enough so that Eric was finally, thankfully, able to blink and look away from the grisly sight. "In the last week?" he repeated, staring at Hank's back and wondering why he had asked. "I don't know. Diana only heard about that one guy, but if you want me to guess, maybe five? Six? One person a day on average?" he estimated conservatively, then frowned in concern when he noticed the Ranger was clearly trembling. "Why?"

"Because Dungeon Master tried to tell us about this place almost a week before we decided to listen," Hank answered shakily, still not turning to face either Eric or the grave. "I went off on my little personal vendetta and dragged everybody to the Dragon's Graveyard instead. All the people that died in the past week, when we should have already been here helping them, their deaths are on my head, Eric."

Eric looked down and chewed his lip in consternation, ostensibly seeing Hank's point, but knowing very well how hard and how personally the Ranger took it whenever he thought something had gone wrong. "I don't know, I wouldn't say it was just your personal vendetta alone," the Cavalier countered quietly. After a quick moment of gathering his thoughts, he was then able to more confidently add, "Look, you can't forget that this has been going on for almost half a year. Dungeon Master could have told us about it months ago, so maybe he should take the blame for it." He shrugged, though Hank still had his back turned and couldn't see the silent gesture. "And it wasn't too long ago that I would have said so and left it at that. But now, my mind starts spinning in little circles and it makes me think, what if he did send us here a month or two ago? Then we might not have been in the right place at the right time to find Zandora's Box or protect Tardos Keep or even to rescue Terri. Don't tell him I said that, by the way, or else he might start thinking I *like* gallivanting around saving kingdoms and rescuing fair maidens and their flea-bitten mutts for a living. But what I'm trying to say is, if you keep running around shouting, 'What if? What if?' then eventually your brain's gonna explode. I know it doesn't help any of these people," he said with a slight wave towards the mass grave, "but we just do what we can, hope we'll find a portal home along the way, and things work out the way they're supposed to for a reason."

Hank just shook his head, almost imperceptibly, refusing to let himself be exonerated.

"Okay. Well, you know," Eric tried again, quickly taking a different tack when he saw his first attempt hadn't worked, "personally, I think it's a good thing that we went to the Dragon's Graveyard before coming here. Seriously, some of those extra Weapons we grabbed made all the difference. Like that Knife Presto had. It didn't help him much, but Corheen was able to hit the Duke pretty hard with it quite a few times. I'm not sure how the battle would have gone if she hadn't weakened him like that. And, well, even though I'm absolutely one hundred percent sure the ol' Cavalier would have been able to get away from El Dukerino anyway, no doubt in my mind whatsoever, no sir, it sure was a lot easier because I had that Dagger. So my vote is, I, for one, am really glad you 'dragged us all' to the Dragon's Graveyard like you did."

Hank sighed, finally turning to face his friend, though he studiously avoided looking at the corpse-filled pit. Following Eric's line of reasoning, clearly trying to grasp some thread of hope that he hadn't failed them all yet again, he admitted slowly, "I suppose you're right about that. Sheila and Sora were able to save a dozen or more people who got trampled in all the panic, and who knows how many sick people they've saved since then? They wouldn't have been able to do any of it if they didn't have that Net."

"Don't you forget it," Eric agreed, poking Hank in the chest for emphasis. "Without that Net, we'd be burying Collin and all those other people right now, and you yourself would be laid up for at least six weeks with a broken shoulder. And the scary part is, if it didn't heal up exactly right, who knows, you might not have ever been able to use your Bow again. Think about it."

"When did you become a psychologist?" Hank asked with a ghost of a smile, but he unconsciously rubbed his shoulder as if the memory still pained him. With a long sigh, he finally admitted, "I still feel bad about the whole thing. People died because we didn't get here right away, and I'm not sure how to forgive myself for that. But you're right. More people would have died if we hadn't made that detour first. Thank you, Doctor Montgomery."

"You're welcome, Mr. Grayson," Eric nodded with a hint of a smile, reaching down to pick up the box of masonry trowels he'd dropped in that shocked moment when they'd stumbled onto the pit. "You can pay my receptionist on the way out. My office doesn't bill insurance."

"Oh, no, looks like I forgot my wallet," Hank answered, but then his smile faded as he finally took a deep breath and looked fully into the mass grave, pondering the sight mutely. "Hey, Eric," he asked after a long and thoughtful moment, pointing at the piles of corpses, "you know, I'm thinking maybe the others don't need to know about this just yet."

Pausing, Eric looked from Hank to the grave and back. The Ranger was right, there was no immediate need to let the others know about this gruesome discovery, and it suddenly occurred to Eric how, despite everything, their leader was trying to shield them all from the horrible realities of the Realm in the same manner that Sheila always tried to protect Bobby's innocence. There was nothing anyone could do about the lives that had been lost, and telling their friends about the massed piles of dead bodies would only make everyone feel as helpless and horrified as the two of them felt now. Their friends had all gone through enough already, and nothing vital was at stake here any more. Though they had all sworn to be completely honest with one another ever since Venger's nearly-disastrous attempt at blackmailing Hank with Bobby's life, there would be no harm in temporarily withholding the truth about the rotting stench that had pervaded Dastirum, until such time as the town was miles behind them.

"Agreed?" Hank asked seriously.

Eric nodded solemnly. "Agreed."

**ooo**

For what was now the third night since the relief missions had reached Dastirum, a party was raging in the inn. It was well past midnight and the revelry showed no sign of slowing down. In between running back and forth to serve the diners and celebrants, Baris paused to estimate that the festivities would last an entire week before life settled back into a normal routine. He didn't mind. After half a year's imprisonment, and so much death and suffering, a week of celebrating was what the citizens of Dastirum needed to put the misery behind them.

The fabled group of Young Ones was no exception to partaking in the festivities. In the town's celebratory mood, they were hailed as heroes, treated almost as royally as the actual Royalty amongst them. Dastirum had welcomed them to extended their visit as long as they wished. Though they felt a certain amount of guilt over accepting rewards and accolades for what was essentially a ruse, the six of them had decided to stay until they heard from Dungeon Master again. Until then, they were each determined to enjoy to the fullest extent all the time here they had available. Now that aid was flowing in to the town, imminent danger did not haunt their every step here; they faced no life-or-death responsibilities, no daily struggle just for survival. For just a little while, they could simply relax and just be the normal teenagers they desperately wanted to be.

After a day or so of really thinking things through, and talking it over with Sheila, Hank seemed to have finally forgiven himself after all, and had soon returned to his normally pleasant self. Presto's confidence had been given such a boost, he'd been downright cheerful ever since the Wizard Echlar told him that had there actually been a curse on Dastirum that needed breaking, his ritual would have worked. Bobby was no longer so bored that he was driving his friends out of their skulls, and he and Uni could finally romp in the streets with out having to worry about anyone's plans for Unicorn stew. There was free food and hot baths, and comfortable beds awaited the little band of heroes in their private rooms in the inn. All in all, Eric decided, life was looking up.

"Your friend has quite a gaggle of admirers," His Highness Lord Tolan mentioned as the Cavalier plopped down on a wobbly bench with a plate of char-broiled steak and potatoes, his second helping of the night. Eric glanced up, if not jealously then at least protectively, and saw that Diana was holding her own quite nicely and rather enjoying the fact that four of Tolan's officers were simultaneously trying to strike up conversations with her.

"Can't say I blame them," Eric commented around a mouthful of steak.

"Of course not," the Noble Lord answered, sipping at a mug of water. One thing that the town did not have yet was a supply of spirits. Both the Queen and her husband had felt there were more vital supplies to be sent in the first wave of relief than ale and wine. "I must say that she's the third most beautiful woman I have ever seen."

"His Highness is a flatterer," chimed in another voice, and the officer that Tolan had previously introduced as Lord Edellin of House Mord sat on the other side of Eric. "He says the very same about every woman he meets."

"Uh huh," Eric smiled, enjoying the pleasant cheer of the evening. Times like this were rare for him and his friends. "And the two more beautiful women are ...?"

"My wife and my sister, of course," Tolan shrugged with a smile.

"Though if you ask his sister, it's the other way around," Edellin interrupted.

"And who is to argue with my beloved little sister and expect to win?" Tolan asked lightly.

"Certainly not me," Edellin finished. "But I keep asking. Eventually she'll say yes."

Eric had already gotten the impression that arguing with Tolan's sister, Lady Kirriam, was a lot like trying to best Diana in a verbal fight. It was possible, just not very likely. Poor Lord Edellin, he was actually trying to propose. He laughed at the easy banter between the two noblemen, cherishing the good times and trying not to think about the fact that they would soon have to end.

All three men happily tucked in to their plates of food, enjoying the subtle, savory richness of the innkeeper's fine cooking. "There's straw sticking to your cape," Tolan noted after a moment, clearly trying to ignore the blatant presence of two royal bodyguards hovering not far behind him as they dined. "You were in the stables petting Hwesta again, weren't you?"

"Your horse is two-timing you," Eric grinned smugly. "What can I say? She knows a good thing when she sees it."

The Prince Consort of Yarfell laughed out loud at this. "That floozy," he commented with a shake of his head. "And how are your friends enjoying your stay thus far? I have not seen much of the others this evening."

"Huh?" Eric asked, swallowing a large bite of roasted, herbed potatoes. "Oh ... well, Bobby got pooped so he took Uni and went to bed a couple hours ago," he explained. "Hank and Sheila are ... I dunno, probably making out in one of the rooms upstairs." He said it jokingly, though he might, or might not, have been surprised to find out he was right. "And Presto, well, he and Corheen have been hanging on your friend Echlar since you guys got here. They both think they can learn some magic from him so they pretty much won't let him out of their sight."

"They might well be able to learn something from him about magic, indeed," Lord Tolan agreed. "And I think Echlar might be able to learn a little something about subtlety and the power of belief from them in turn," he added, obliquely referencing the truth about the Duke's so-called curse, which he and Echlar alone had been told in private. They would find a way to break the news gently to Dastirum, much, much later, when the wounds were not so fresh and emotions not running quite so high. "It certainly doesn't hurt that he's soaking up the attention like a sponge. In fact, I have heard that Echlar is willing to take the young lady on as an apprentice, if she wishes. That makes her the first apprentice he has even considered in thirty years."

"You know what Collin told me today?" Eric replied, nodding across the common room to where the stocky Dastirite was dancing, if one was generous enough to call his wild movements 'dancing,' with his slightly embarrassed wife. "Dungeon Master showed up and told him, and Baris and Sora and Corheen, that they were all going to be his students now too, now that each of them has a Weapon of Power. I think he kind of wants to train people to be able to defend this town, you know?"

"Of course," Tolan agreed. "And because they have already fought once to defend their town when no one else did, it proves they are responsible and have the initiative it takes. You did well by giving them those Weapons."

"Glad to see the place is in good hands, then," Eric nodded. "Because as nice as this all is, we can't stay here forever." He sighed, knowing that it was always going to come down to this. When Dungeon Master had paid his visit to his new Dastirite students, he had also strongly hinted that his current pupils should consider traveling east within the week. And so, east they would go, leaving Dastirum behind them as they had left so many other towns and villages. No matter where they went and how many friends they made here in the Realm, they would always have to leave in the end. Questing for that one chance to get home left them no other option.

Tolan eyed the young Cavalier critically. "My offer still stands," he reminded. "Dastirum survives because of you and your friends. This great service to my Kingdom will never be forgotten so long as it is in our power to remember. If ever you decide to stay here in the Realm rather than questing for a way back to your world, Yarfell will gladly welcome with open arms heroes such as yourselves."

"Don't tempt me, Eric answered in all seriousness. Yarfell Proper sounded every bit as cosmopolitan and educated as wealthy Khadish. It was indeed a tempting offer, almost as tempting as the similar one Rahmoud had made them not too long ago. In either place, they'd have lives of ease and honor, and people who truly cared about them. But neither place was where Eric wanted to spend the rest of his life.

Sighing, Eric shook his head and, much to Lord Tolan's bafflement, clicked his heels together three times while reminding himself firmly, "There's no place like home ..."

**ooo**

It had been three days since the Young Ones had said their goodbyes, in some cases tearfully, and left Dastirum behind them.

Well-supplied by Lord Tolan before their departure, they had traveled easily over these last few days. Their rations were still in good supply, and they had encountered little that could qualify as excitement or danger while still within the borders of Yarfell. As they traveled generally east, the landscape had been nothing but absolutely beautiful. Flowers opened their bright faces to the sun in a riot of colors splashing through the green meadows, and the forests of this land, tended by the Wood Elves, were the most verdant and welcoming woods they had ever seen. It was, in fact, the most peaceful time they had ever spent in then woodlands of the Realm.

They had crossed the eastern border of the Kingdom of Yarfell earlier this morning, and the feeling of peace had not changed. Though they were expecting a visit from Dungeon Master at any time, so far, it had not come. It was now a little past noon, and their hearty lunch coupled with the quiet beauty of their picnic site left them all feeling a little lazy. With no quest to follow and no destination they needed to reach, what was the harm in resting a few hours here?

Kneeling by a nearby brook, Diana happily hummed a quiet song to herself as she splashed the clear and refreshingly cold water on her face. Sometimes the simple pleasures were the best. Nothing felt quite as good as washing away the dust and grime that came naturally with traveling on foot. Nothing, except perhaps a nice, long nap.

Between their filling lunch, the walking they had done, and the sweetly perfumed air of this flower-laden meadow, Diana felt comfortably drowsy and was more than happy to indulge herself. Lying back on the grass, she soaked up the warmth of the suns and let herself drift off.

Naps seemed to be the order of the hour. A little while ago, Bobby had been chasing Uni all around the meadow, or perhaps it had been the other way around and Uni was the one doing the chasing. Sometimes it was hard to tell, but either way, the youngsters had long since worn themselves out. Bobby was now snoozing soundly under a shady tree, with an equally sleeping Uni sprawled bonelessly across his knees.

Nearby, Hank and Sheila had also given in to the urge to nap. Lounging against the wide trunk of another tree, they pressed close to each other, Sheila dozing on Hank's shoulder, in the beginnings of another one of those annoyingly cute little cuddles that Eric would have surely commented on, had the Cavalier not been just as soundly asleep on the other side of the tree.

Presto, who was technically on watch, was the only one even pretending to be awake. He had been practicing his cantrips for the past few minutes. Following the wisdom the old Wizard Echlar had imparted, he was starting with small spells and working his way up. He already knew that, when push came to shove, he'd been able to cast a spell without the use of his Hat. He'd done it twice now, so it was time to develop that power more effectively.

Flopped out on his stomach, half paying attention and half fighting the urge to take a nap himself, Presto lifted his hand and focused on a spell as much as his sleepy mind would allow. If you want to summon the winds, Echlar had explained, start by learning how to call up a breeze.

A breeze it was. With a wave of his fingers and a burst of concentration, a small gust came out of nowhere, just enough to delicately scatter the white petals of the patch of flowers he'd been lying in.

Presto smiled, feeling sleepy but proud nonetheless. He'd done it, and, of course, nobody had seen it because they were all asleep. Well, maybe they had the right idea. A nice lie-down felt so inviting right now.

Rolling over onto his back, Presto stared up at the breathtaking azure sky. He could still keep watch like this. All he had to do was not fall asleep, but it was so peaceful here ...

The slight crack of a twig changed everything. At that mere sound, Diana instantly sprang to her feet, Staff extended and immediately awake. With his Bow already drawn, Hank was only half a second behind her, all senses on alert. Presto quickly scrambled to his feet, reaching for his Hat. He saw Eric was already up, with his Shield protectively in front of him as he advanced warily towards the source of the sound, a large bush growing near the brook. Sheila hung back a bit, ready to disappear, while Uni had leapt off Bobby's legs so the little Barbarian could spring up with his Club in hand.

Silently, they fanned out, circling the bush and eyeing it carefully as its small branches jerked and shuddered as if something alive were inside it. Whatever was hiding in its leaves, they could not tell, and did not know if it represented a danger to them. Was it something as harmless as a large bird looking for a roost? A wounded animal, perhaps? Or one of Venger's spies?

Much to their surprise, it was a young man. Weak, gaunt, dressed in worn clothing and looking much like the starving Dastirites of a week ago, he stumbled dizzily from the protective cover of the bush, clearly disoriented and unaware of what he was doing. He managed only a few unsteady steps before collapsing, unconscious, into a very surprised Diana's arms.

Eventually, once the young man had regained consciousness and they'd fed him a good meal of their trail rations, he would tell them his name was Kosar.

**ooo**

The End


End file.
